COLUMBUS – Barack Obama ventured into Hillary-land Friday as he proposed a social security fix to a roomful of Ohio senior citizens on his economic tour of Midwestern battleground states.

Maybe it was because they were hand-culled by campaign volunteers, but the candidate’s foray into formerly-enemy territory seemed to be a hit with the crowd. The seniors – some black, some white and some even Republicans – were enthusiastic about the visit from Obama and his wife, Michelle.

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The senator’s plan to tax social security wages over $250,000 among other campaign promises he mentioned were met with moderate applause by the crowd.

“I’m so excited I can hardly talk to you, sir,” Pastor Leon Troy, 82, of Columbus, told the candidate. The snappily-dressed Troy was one of the blacks in the audience, clearly excited about a black candidate for president.

Another man told Obama that both he and his wife were registered Republicans. “But we feel like we could be converted,” he said. Obama then told him he was what his campaign calls an “Obamican”.

But both Obamas seemed to turn their star-wattage down low while they gave shout-outs to America’s grandparents and focused on social security solutions and the economy. Barack Obama, especially, seemed to trade in his Hollywood sunglasses for policy-wonk spectacles as he spoke earnestly about his plan to mend the country’s tattered economic safety net.

Michelle Obama spoke warmly and at some length about her mother, telling the crowd that she depends on her mother to watch her two daughters while the couple campaigns on the road.

“There’s nothing my mother dreads more than being a burden,” the senator’s wife said. “We have a vested interest in this society to make sure the seniors have what they need.”

The Ohio seniors present agreed with her. Ohio, an industrial state which has been hit particularly hard by the recession and the mortgage crisis, is a good place for Obama to talk jobs and money. The senator spoke of the thousands of Ohio union workers left jobless by recent cutbacks at DHL and General Motors while emphasizing the importance of a strong and non-privatized Social Security plan. He drew some nervous laughter from the audience while asking how Americans would feel if all of the nation’s retirement plans were bound up with the daily ups and downs of the stock market. This would be unacceptable, Obama inferred, while referring to Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal of the 1930s, the beginning of a strong national social security plan.

“For generations we’ve worked to keep a simple promise in this country. It was the promise that FDR made and that Washington has kept,” Obama said. “And if we don’t act now, the promise of Social Security won’t be kept.”

Many of the folks in the room could remember when FDR’s New Deal was signed into law and became the nation’s progressive, historic safety net and retirement plan. But many of the ideas proposed in the New Deal have been nibbled away over the intervening decades, leaving the national safety net moth-eaten and riddled with holes. The American Dream, and the ability of people to achieve that dream, is at stake in this election.

One piece of that dream is the reassurance of a comfortable retirement.

“Retirement security is going to be a priority of my first term,” Obama said, though not a priority of his first year.

Obama made a sly verbal jab at “straight talk,” one of Sen. John McCain’s catchphrases.

“We need to be talking straight to the American people about the challenges that are ahead of us,” Obama said.


Obama called to remove the cap on the Social Security payroll cap. Currently workers pay taxes only on the first $100,000 of their earnings.

“That way we can extend the promise of Social Security and not burden seniors,” he said. “Ninety-seven percent of Americans won’t notice a change.”

Health care and “a little thing we call Iraq” would be the priorities of his first year in office, he said, and strove to separate his policies from McCain’s.

“I think it’s time to stop cutting back the safety net for working people, while he works to protect the golden parachute for CEOs,” Obama said.

The senator took off his jacket to take questions from the small crowd. One woman asked what Obama would do to decrease America’s increasing international “antagonism.”

“We have to end the war in Iraq,” he said. “We’ve got to do it carefully. We’ve got to talk to countries we don’t like.”

Even Iran and its controversial president du jour Mahmoud Ahmedinejad.

“But I’m not going to sit and have tea with him,” Obama said, hastily.