Retirees not shy about politics
By CNN's Richard Quest
 |  Retirees make up a large percentage of Florida's voters. |
| |
|  VIDEO |
 CNN's Richard Quest asks Florida's older voters their opinion on the election.
|
YOUR SAY |
Check back to read a selection of your e-mails.
|
|
BOCA RATON, Florida (CNN) -- Rose Simborg-Mellow is 93 years young, and she has seen it all.
She took up painting when she was 70, and her apartment at the Casa Del Mar retirement home in Boca Raton is overflowing with her efforts.
She knows why she is voting for the Democrats.
"George Bush is to blame because he didn't go after the terrorists," she says. "Going into Iraq was a mistake and he knew it. He made up his mind to go in there, he didn't have the facts, he wanted to go in for mass destruction "
As we eat lunch at this predominantly Jewish retirement home, the war is a theme that comes up again and again.
"This country has gone to war without a real cause for our getting involved, and it's left us with a deficit of about $6 trillion," says Murray Weinstein.
Murray and Adele Weinstein have been married for more than 60 years, and they are also worried about how they will manage.
Their home is expensive -- it costs them at least $40,000 a year for comfort in old age.
"We do not have as much money today as we did before George W. Bush," says Adele Weinstein.
Adds her husband: "I think the economy is the most important thing, because the economy affects everybody and all these things derive from the economy."
In this community, Republicans are something of an endangered species: They are few and far between. Retiree Abe Foreman is one.
"They are so much against my president, that's right," Foreman says.
"They have become so embittered they are slandering him, and that upsets me because I don't mind if they have factual things to say, but to say that he is a bad man, he's an evil man, he's an uneducated man, he doesn't know anything -- that to me is slurs."
The views at Casa Del Mar are lifelong convictions, so residents here aren't going to change their opinions over the next couple of months.
But in an era where the story is voter apathy, here the voters are determined to take part.
As Rose puts it: "I am paying a great deal of attention. I am very concerned. I am worried not because of myself but because of my children, my grandchildren and my great-grandchildren, and the future of this country."
