Good Insights

Hewitt:

[T]he damage to the AARP brand is deep and it will last because all across America seniors are watching their alleged "voice" speak mostly about selling them out in the cause of serving a hard left agenda by a hard left president and Congress.

This isn't why the average American joins AARP. The deeper damage comes from products not sold, members not enrolled and services not solicited or accepted. Real reporting would look at the long term membership trends at AARP and discover what percentage of eligible Americans have actually joined in years past and whether, just as the Baby Boom moves massively into its retirement years, AARP has picked exactly the wrong moment to drop the veil and reveal itself as part of the left side of the Beltway establishment.

Two months ago if anyone thought about AARP at all, it was as a non-partisan service provider which, on occasion, would rally its troops on the side of larger slices of the pie for senior citizens. It took decades to build that reputation, and it is shattered in the space of weeks.

Some senior management within Big Pharma must also be asking themselves who exactly advised them to throw in with the suddenly besieged president and whether they ought not to be convening an emergency meeting to recalibrate their strategy of selling out American healthcare in exchange for a false security regarding their place on the profit hit list. Appeasement never works in foreign affairs, and it doesn't work in domestic politics either.