How to talk to older McCain supporters.

As McCain dithers and withdraws from states where Obama holds an insurmountable lead, older Americans are taking a closer look at the man calling them "my friends".

From the golden age retirement retreats of Florida up through small farming towns in Missouri and up into Michigan seniors are getting the message: John McCain is not a friend to older Americans and working families.

Americans regard a safe, secure and dignified retirement as a right, not a privilege. John McCain has a secure lifetime pension paid for by American taxpayers but regards Social Security for the rest of us as a "disgrace". He would turn over to the croupiers of Wall Street the most successful social insurance program in the history of our country.

McCain has been willing to collect $23,000 in Social Security last year, while at the same time supporting Bush's failed attempts to privatize the program, raise the retirement age, cut guaranteed benefits, and to allow Wall Street hedge funds to gamble with our Social Security Trust Funds.

Even though he is willing to collect benefits, he calls the program a disgrace and promises, if elected, to privatize Social Security "along the lines of President Bush."

Previously, I wrote of McCain's attacks on Medicare and when you tie those together with his plans for Social Security, you can see why I can say that John McCain is no friend of working Americans or their parents and grand-parents. He would take two of the best managed and most reliable social insurance programs in the world and hand them over to speculators, HMOs, and insurance oligarchs.

John McCain supported the deregulation that contributed in large part to the current economic crises and which has driven down home-values and the equity that older people rely on for retirement, devalued pension funds and 401k plans, and now he targets Social Security and Medicare.

You know your friends by their deeds. With friends like John McCain, seniors and working families do not need enemies!