WILLIAMSVILLE, N.Y.—Kathy Hochul has arrived at an assisted-living facility in this Buffalo suburb, and she's brought the gift of gloom. She asks for a few minutes of time from the dozen senior citizens here, and small-talks with the ones who seem interested. 
 
 "I've been married 73 years," says one of them. 
 
 "Seventy-three years!" says Hochul, bending over to talk to him. "I want to know your secret." 
 
 "Don't die!" he says. 
 
 She laughs out loud. "Don't die! Works every time." 
 
 The happy exchange segues nicely into her speech, which is—crudely speaking—about how if Republicans have their way, people will die. 
 
 "A couple weeks ago," says Hochul, "there was a law passed on Capitol Hill that turned back the clock to the 1960s. What it did was, it said no longer will our Medicare program be the way it is now. It ends Medicare as we know it. That's not me talkin'. That's the Wall Street Journal and all the major news sources." 
 
 Four days from Tuesday's special election, Democrats are trying to close this campaign with the attack they've loved since Rep. Paul Ryan introduced his "Path to Prosperity" in April. The election is a choice: Vote for the Democrat and save Medicare, or vote for the Republican and start dismantling it for spare parts. 
 
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 It has the makings of a totally issue-based election. And this campaign is basically free of personal attacks and character attacks. But that's not to say there has been an ideological debate over Medicare or entitlement spending. The Republican, Jane Corwin, answers the Medicare attack by saying no, seriously, she'll work twice as hard to make sure it survives. The first election since the Ryan plan passed the House isn't really a fight over the Ryan plan. It's about which candidate loves Medicare more—or more accurately, about how the other candidate loves it less. 
 
 The Democratic message is the easier sell, and Hochul is good at selling it. She's a local politician who rose through the ranks to become the clerk of Erie County, home to a nice plurality of voters in the 26th district. She's risen to that level while sounding exactly the way most of the people here sound, with a flat western New York accent and sentences that play some havoc with clauses and tenses. 
 
 "What it does," she continues, "is instead of having guaranteed health insurance, like we've all come to rely on the last 45 years, it says you'll have a voucher, instead. Now, they're saying: Don't worry, seniors! It's not going to affect you. It's only the people my age, 55 and up. But they actually did something that made your prescription drugs cost more. Current seniors would actually pay more for prescription drugs, and future seniors—and I hope to be a senior someday myself—will have a voucher program. I've gotta tell ya, I'm the candidate in this race who's gonna look out for your interests." 
 
 She wraps up and gets polite applause. She's won over the room, a little. There's one older lady who's murmuring about how she wants to keep watching the documentary about Mexico that Hochul interrupted. There's more applause. Hank Janicki, who will later tell me he's a World War II veteran who was relieved at the end "because Truman saved us," raises his hand. How does Hochul save Medicare? 
 
 "We have problems in Washington," says Hochul. "We have to cut our expenses." For example: "You know how much money we give a year to Pakistan? About $3 billion a year! They're not exactly our friends these days. You know where they caught Bin Laden? Yeah, right in the middle of Pakistan! The downtown area, practically. You're right, sir. I think their priorities are wrong. They're worrying about Pakistan and giving the people who had more some tax breaks." 
 
 I ask Janicki what he thought of the answer. "Eh," he says, "it was an answer." He's not excited. The Pakistan stuff came out of nowhere. Still, he's for Hochul now. 
 
 Hochul bangs this same drum wherever she goes. After she meets voters at a nearby Greek restaurant, I try to nail her down on how, exactly, she thinks Medicare can be kept in its current form into the indefinite future. For example, in her crusade to save the system, she opposes the $500 billion in savings that were part of the Affordable Care Act. Those savings were weaponized in Republican ads in 2010, but according to the Medicare actuary they keep the system alive an extra eight years. Why scrap them? 
 
 "I think we've got to make sure that it doesn't trickle down to hurt any of the beneficiaries," she says, "and I'm not confident of that." 
 
 This doesn't sound much like a debate about entitlements in Washington. There is no talk here of "shared sacrifice." There's the luxury of campaign-speak, where everything good can be preserved forever. That's how Jane Corwin sells the Ryan plan. Later the same day, Corwin arrives at a Republican dinner in Clarence, another Buffalo suburb. A thin crowd has barely dented the immense supply of pasta and cannoli and gooey peanut-butter treats while talking about a race they think they're winning. 
 
 "A lot of those Jack Davis votes are going to come home," explains Ray Walter, a local legislator, referring to the Tea Party candidate in the race. "Hochul's got the views of 30 percent or so of the people in the district, so she'll win that, and that's it." 
 
 Key to keeping the Hochul vote down: convincing voters that she's lying her head off about Medicare. Corwin arrives and makes the rounds, joking and reminiscing. In the final debate this week, she was a little stiffer than Hochul. Her attack lines were worn with use—it was hard to count how many times she called the Democrat a "career politician." In person, she's much more affable, quick with facts and anecdotes. And even in a room of Republicans, she is asking for help convincing voters that she wants to save a linchpin of the Great Society. 
 
 "Just for the record, I am not decimating Medicare!" 
 
 Oh! Thank God! 
 
 "On the contrary, I am the one who's trying to save Medicare! It's President Obama and the Medicare Board of Trustees who say if we do nothing, the system will be bankrupt by 2024. When you go out there, do me a favor and tell your friends: Jane is saving Medicare, not decimating." 
 
 In an interview after the event, Corwin says she thinks she's identified how the race became about Medicare. 
 
 "When the Ryan plan came out," she says, "the national Democrats came down on this 'Oh, you're decimating Medicare!' message. They just sent it down to my opponent and let her run with it." 
 
 But Corwin doesn't support keeping Medicare around in its current form. She supports turning it all into Medicare Part D. She gets some of the questions voters have asked, like: In this new Utopia of free-market plans, why exactly do insurers pick up, and not ignore, seniors with pre-existing conditions? 
 
 "Certainly I'd like to see pre-existing conditions and children staying on their parents' plans," she says. 
 
 If Corwin wins this district next Tuesday, after all the attention paid to the race, Republicans will offer her victory as proof that Republicans can endorse the Ryan plan and survive. That'd be too simplistic. If Corwin wins, it will be because the district has a seven-point registration advantage for Republicans over Democrats—and because she didn't so much defend the Ryan plan as defend Medicare, and she did so by accusing her Democratic foe of defending it with lesser passion. 
 
 "She said it's all on the table," says Corwin, defending her much-attacked, omnipresent ad in which Hochul is portrayed as an entitlement-cutter in disguise. "In the context she said it, it sounded like cuts to me. She doesn't want to take a position because it would be politically difficult to do that." 
 
 Like Slate Politics on Facebook. Follow Slate on Twitter. ||||| WASHINGTON -- The 2012 election found its defining issue on Tuesday night, with an insurgent Democrat upsetting a well-financed Republican in a deeply red district in New York state. 
 
 The GOP paved the way for the Democrat's victory by voting earlier this year to end the current Medicare program that guarantees health coverage to seniors and replace it with a voucher system that provides premium support for the elderly to purchase private health insurance. 
 
 The Republican in the race, Jane Corwin, fully endorsed the GOP plan to alter Medicare, while the Democrat, Kathy Hochul, defended the social safety net. The race's polling trends point to Medicare as the defining issue, while the conversation has played out on a national level. Former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) summed up the Democratic position: "We have a plan -- it's called Medicare." 
 
 With some exceptions, Democrats have ranged from reluctant defenders of government spending to outright hawkish assailants of social funds. But nothing focuses the mind like political calculation, and the upset in upstate New York has sent a message so clear that not even the highest priced Democratic consultant could miss it. 
 
 "Kathy Hochul's victory tonight is a tribute to Democrats' commitment to preserve and strengthen Medicare, create jobs and grow our economy. And it sends a clear message that will echo nationwide: Republicans will be held accountable for their vote to end Medicare," Pelosi said in a statement after the election. 
 
 The race began turning toward the Democrat when Corwin embraced the GOP's Medicare plan in mid-April. The campaigns had already been communicating with voters, airing television spots for nearly a month. Corwin attacked Hochul on the airwaves in late March for having sought property tax increases and attempted to link Hochul to Pelosi, following the playbook Republicans applied with success during 2010. Hochul responded with a series of ads beginning in early April, but none mentioned Medicare. 
 
 That changed on April 26 when the Hochul campaign began airing an ad that hit Corwin for saying "she would vote for the 2012 Republican budget that would essentially end Medicare," that would have seniors "pay $6,400 more for the same coverage" and would "cut taxes for the wealthiest Americans." 
 
 WATCH: 
 
 Just before Hochul's television campaign shifted to Medicare, a Siena Research survey showed Corwin leading Hochul by a surprisingly narrow margin, 36 percent to 31 percent. But ten days later, an automated survey conducted by Democratic firm Public Policy Polling and sponsored by SEIU showed Hochul leading by four points (35 percent to 31 percent). And in the final week, two more surveys, one from PPP and one from Siena College, both showed Hochul leading by similar margins. 
 
 Jef Pollock, Hochul's pollster, told HuffPost that the numbers showed the Democrat winning among seniors and independents, two groups that broke heavily for Republicans in 2010. 
 
 "This race was won, in a significant way, because of the disastrous decision by the GOP to dismantle Medicare as we know it," he said. "Kathy Hochul was a great candidate. And credit is due to her for running a great race as well as credit to the campaign for making Medicare a central issue -- that's why Hochul was winning 74 percent of the voters who said that Medicare was the most important issue to them in the most recent Siena poll conducted just a few days ago," he said. 
 
 Steve Murphy, Hochul's media consultant, argued that his candidate persuaded voters she was concerned about the deficit without needing to cut Medicare. "A Democrat in a competitive district can win on the Ryan budget and Medicare issue as long as they first demonstrate to voters that they are tough on spending and serious about the problem of rising deficits," he suggested. "Five of our seven ads had a strong fiscal component, not just Medicare." 
 
 Democrats highlighted the serious money the Republicans put into the election. "Today, the Republican plan to end Medicare cost Republicans $3.4 million and a seat in Congress. And this is only the first seat," said Rep. Steve Israel (D-N.Y.), head of the Democrats' House campaign arm. 
 
 House Republicans pinned blame for Corwin's loss on a quirky third-party candidate, Jack Davis, who ran under the Tea Party despite an eclectic and sometimes liberal political past. "Republican Jane Corwin ran a hard-fought campaign against two well-funded Democrats, including one masquerading under the Tea Party name," said Rep. Pete Sessions (R-Texas), head of the House GOP campaign operation. "Obviously, each side would rather win a special election than lose, but to predict the future based on the results of this unusual race is naive and risky." 
 
 American Crossroads, a GOP group that spent heavily in the race, said that the race indicates a resurgent Democratic party, whether the third-party candidate tipped it or not. "The debate over whether Medicare mattered more than a third-party candidate who split the Republican vote is mostly a partisan Rorschach Test," said American Crossroads' Jonathan Collegio. "What is clear is that this election is a wake-up call for anyone who thinks that 2012 will be just like 2010. It's going to be a tougher environment, Democrats will be more competitive, and we need to play at the top of our game to win big next year." 
 
 The GOP can't and won't retreat from the Medicare valley it has occupied. "We know that bell can't be un-rung, and we wouldn't want to," said a well-placed GOP aide. "We're on the right side of history. If President Obama wants to be 'the grown-up in the room,' he's going to have to grapple with grown-up problems. We have." 
 
 Indeed, the GOP has been doing plenty of grappling lately, but it's been mostly with constituents and members of the party. Presidential candidate Newt Gingrich was browbeaten by his party for calling the Medicare plan "right-wing social engineering" and endorsing Paul Ryan's budget, which includes Medicare reform as its signature component and has become a litmus test for candidates. 
 
 At home, Republicans have faced hostile town halls with seniors questioning how they'll be able to purchase private insurance with a voucher that doesn't rise at the rate of health care costs. At a recent town hall, a constituent of Rep. Rob Woodall (R-Ga.) raised a practical obstacle to obtaining coverage in the private market within the confines of an employer-based health insurance system: What happens when you retire? 
 
 "The private corporation that I retired from does not give medical benefits to retirees," the woman told the congressman in video captured a local Patch reporter in Dacula, Ga. 
 
 "Hear yourself, ma'am. Hear yourself," Woodall told the woman. "You want the government to take care of you, because your employer decided not to take care of you. My question is, 'When do I decide I'm going to take care of me?'" 
 
 Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) pounced on the remark, telling the Washington Post that it typifies Republican ideology. 
 
 Tuesday's special election was held to fill the seat of Chris Lee, who resigned after topless photographs he sent of himself to a woman on Craigslist surfaced.
– A closely watched congressional race near Buffalo looks to be tipping in Democrats' favor: A new poll gives Kathy Hochul a 4-point edge over Republican Jane Corwin heading into Tuesday's special election, reports Politico. The race is drawing national attention in part because it's seen as a proxy fight on Paul Ryan's budget/Medicare plan and partly because a good chunk of votes that would presumably go to Corwin are being siphoned away by Tea Party candidate Jack Davis. National groups have been pouring money into the race, GOP ones especially of late. Hochul has been pounding Corwin in ad after ad by linking her to Ryan's plan and calling her a Medicare killer. Corwin insists she's the one trying to save it. "The national Democrats came down on this 'Oh, you're decimating Medicare!' message," she tells Dave Weigel of Slate. "They just sent it down to my opponent and let her run with it." Weigel's take: This "isn't really a fight over the Ryan plan. It's about which candidate loves Medicare more—or more accurately, about how the other candidate loves it less." So whose seat are the candidates trying to fill? Remember Craigslist cruiser Chris Lee?