The Idiotic Satisfaction of Believing Your Opponents Are Stupid Only Hurts You

I made a comment somewhere that an early chance to damage Republicans is in Donald Trump's promise to protect Social Security and Medicare running into Paul Ryan's clear fetish for destroying them, in line with his real God, Ayn Rand's psychotic commandments.   I pointed out that a large number of old people were suckered into voting for Trump and this is a chance to point out to them that their choice has real effects in their lives if Trump breaks that campaign promise, which he seems to be ready to.

Well, after making an obvious point I got flack asserting that Trump voters were so stupid they wouldn't know that this wasn't something to do with Obamacare - how they are supposed to mistake Social Security for Obamacare, I can't imagine someone imagining.    I suppose the message of the lefties making that argument was it wasn't worth trying to use that as a political weapon, one which could split the Republicans in congress who, I am sure, would not want to face the backlash of angry seniors and others facing the prospect of losing their two major lifelines and millions of their children who know those are the only thing between their parents being somewhat independent and being dependent on them.

I don't know if such people don't know old people but the ones I know - being in that age cohort, myself, know which side their Social Security is buttered on and if there is a way to rouse them to oppose politicians it's by endangering those programs.   It might be satisfying in a smug and useless way to believe that older Trump voters are too stupid to know that but it's politically useless and almost certainly wrong. 

Democrats have few options for fighting Paul Ryan and the other Republicanfascists and will need to use whatever they can, passing up this chance would be massively stupid.