Trump’s latest tweets are relevant. Hillary’s emails are relevant. Paid speeches? Financial ties to Moscow? Bitter, sexist remarks? All relevant.

But for every news story that sheds light on these candidates’ characters, several more stories go unwritten — particularly about how this election will impact America’s aging population, and to what extent senior citizens will be cared for in either a Clinton or Trump administration.

Clinton on Senior Citizens

One issue that consistently weighs heavily on the minds of American seniors is the question of raising the retirement age or not. When this proposal finds its way to Congress, it’s typically Republicans — and Democrats who don’t know better — who vote to raise it, likely because their own retirement incomes are already fixed in place, in the form of generous pensions. What does it matter if we condemn the rest of America to longer and longer working lives?

Clinton is steadfast in her commitment to leaving the retirement age at 65, and she’s right about the reason: The higher we raise it, the more unlikely it is that unskilled minority laborers will even reach an age at which they can begin taking advantage of those benefits. She’s right to point out that minorities in the United States are still far more likely to spend their lives laboring physically and then dying young, as opposed to folks like her, who “make [their] monies different ways.”

With respect to Social Security itself, Clinton has dismissed expanding benefits “for everyone,” but has vowed to “help those people who are most at risk,” including low-income seniors. Unfortunately, the former secretary has also consistently and even forcefully rejected the calls made by her former opponent, Senator Bernie Sanders, to use Medicare’s existing infrastructure to provide health care to all Americans as a right of citizenship, despite the fact that doing so could save the United States an extraordinary amount of time and money. Guaranteed health care would also be hugely life-changing for American seniors concerned about the cost of medication or even routine checkups.

On the whole, though, Clinton’s proposals are friendly to seniors, whether they’re still working or already retired.

Trump on Senior Citizens

For some reason, the GOP is still the average senior citizen’s favorite political party, despite the long decades Republicans have spent throwing aging Americans under the bus.

Republicans in general thrive when Americans are convinced that the country is broke and Social Security is on the verge of bankruptcy. This is a flat-out lie, constructed to make you comfortable with the idea that this hugely successful, hugely important safety net won’t always be around. It’s no secret that politicians on both sides of the aisle have sworn allegiance to the financial services industry, and therefore have a lot to gain if Social Security goes away, replaced with some inferior private sector replacement. Chile attempted to privatize their own version of Social Security, and it was an unmitigated disaster.

So it should come as no surprise that Donald Trump and Paul Ryan agree on Social Security the way they agree on the Affordable Care Act: Dismantle it, cast it aside and care not one whit about the millions of people whose lives will become inordinately more difficult thereafter.

In fact, Republicans have been attempting to destroy Social Security almost from the moment it became law in 1935, at which time it passed along predictably partisan lines. Trump badly wants you to believe he’s an iconoclast, or somehow outside the political mainstream, but he’s the same sort of smiling manipulator the GOP has bet on for most of our lifetimes. They’ve been holding seniors hostage for years, and evidence says a Trump presidency would only embolden their efforts.

Indeed — despite making a big show in the early debates about not cutting funding for Social Security, Trump surrogates have been very clear during less public press events: A Trump administration “would be open to” cutting Social Security and other entitlements. With this, as with virtually every other issue in play right now, Trump is a ball of irreconcilable contradictions.

Senior citizens are living longer, more active lives than ever before — and they deserve a candidate who has their best interests at heart.

Beyond Social Security

Of course, Social Security is far from the only issue affecting senior citizens. The ongoing health care debate, our domestic energy policy, our never-ending quest to “export” democracy to impoverished countries — all of these factors come into play. It also means Conservative dogma has the potential to be more damaging than ever before, where our aging population is concerned. Folks cannot retire in comfort in a country that has so many questionable priorities.

That’s why it’s expected that Trump’s support among older voters will falter during this election — and it is likely because, for all her many flaws, Hillary Clinton is demonstrably the stronger candidate on these and a dozen other high-stakes issues. When the dust settles and there’s a new president in the Oval Office, here’s hoping Americans actually vote with their heads instead of their hearts — our seniors have a lot riding on the outcome in November.