Obama Election Watch

This week the Dow Jones Industrial stock average dropped to its lowest point in two years. John McCain marked the occasion by proposing that younger workers be permitted to divert a portion of their Social Security payroll taxes into private accounts that could be invested in stocks.

What a foolish time for McCain to revive this tired old chestnut.

The McCain plan is good for brokers but could be terrible for senior citizens. It will scare seniors to death. The last thing they want is to have is a retirement security plan in which the arrival of their Social Security check is tied to the vagaries of the stock market.

Three years ago, President Bush unnecessarily spent a lot of political capital in pushing his plan to privatize Social Security. The plan went nowhere when even members of his own party failed to get onboard. Now McCain has proposed something very similar to the Bush plan that was dead on its arrival on Capitol Hill.

Obama can now focus on organizing seniors into potent voting blocs. Any plan that meddles with Social Security is a red flag that keeps senior citizens awake at night. Nationwide, senior citizens over the age of 65 make up 12 percent of the electorate. But they are more likely than any other age group to be registered to vote and to cast ballots.

McCain is risking a political disaster in the state of Florida. Florida has a huge bloc of 27 electoral votes that have gone to the Republicans in recent presidential elections. There are nearly 3 million senior citizens in Florida and they make up 17 percent of the electorate, the highest percentage in the nation.

The battleground states of Iowa and Pennsylvania also have a high percentage of senior citizens, about 15 percent of all eligible voters.

Obama can make excellent use of McCain’s blunder on Social Security to win older voters who are terrified that the government will tamper with a federal retirement system that has been in place since the presidency of F.D.R.