While 2008 will go down as a year of hope and change in American politics, the collapse of Wall Street and bursting of the housing bubble will probably mean that fear and anger take center stage in the 2010 elections. If so, the most coveted swing voters may soon be the Busted Boomers - individuals 50 and older who placed supreme faith in the financial markets and now find their long-held dreams of a comfortable retirement eviscerated.

Despite having plowed significant portions of their paychecks into age-appropriate financial vehicles at the urging of investment gurus, economists and government officials, these folks face years longer in the workplace than planned, provided they can keep their job or find a new one, and serious doubts about their ability to sustain anything remotely resembling their current lifestyle as they grow old. Panic is not too strong a word to describe their overall mind-set.

Whichever political party can develop a message to address the anxieties of the Busted Boomers will have a distinct advantage in next year's midterm congressional contests and the 2012 presidential race.

A look at the demographics of mutual fund ownership in the country underscores the impact a successful appeal to this population could have. According to the Investment Company Institute, 44 percent of U.S. households were participating in the financial markets in 2007, up from 29 percent as recently as 1994. That represents 88 million individual investors.

More than half of these investors are 45 years old or older, and a third of this group (approximately 17.6 million people) are older than 65, meaning they have limited opportunities to earn their way back to retirement solvency. The data also show that 4 in 10 households owning mutual funds earn $50,000 to $100,000 annually, hardly the fat cats that some imagine.

As it turns out, both older voters and those from middle-income households were closely split between Democrat Barack Obama and Republican John McCain in 2008. Fifty-to-64-year-olds voted 50 percent for Obama, compared to 49 percent for McCain. Similarly, those earning $50,000 to $100,000 were dead even at 49 percent in 2008, after favoring George W. Bush by 12 points in the previous election. Clearly, a strategy that addresses these groups' mounting distress over lost stock market value could be pivotal in swing states and districts.

So what would a winning agenda look like? First and foremost, Busted Boomers demand economic recovery. In this sense, they are the Democrats' voters to lose. If things don't get better soon, it will be easy for the GOP to hang a failed economy on the president and the congressional majority. Conversely, a sustained wave of good news on the housing, employment and stock market fronts within the next year could lock this group up for Democrats for the foreseeable future.

Beyond the big picture, they need the tools to rebuild their dreams in a hurry. Unfortunately, their options for doing so can be pretty well summed up in four words: work longer, save more.

The former could be enabled by changes to Medicare and Social Security policies for older workers. For example, current Medicare regulations, put in place as part of the 1983 entitlement reforms, deny coverage to age-eligible individuals who are working for companies that offer health insurance to their employees. Since those from 65 to 69 incur approximately twice as much in health care expenses as colleagues in their 20s and 30s - and are more expensive to insure - the average older worker becomes significantly less attractive to hire or retain. Restoring Medicare as the primary payer for all seniors would reverse this calculus.

Social Security provides similar disincentives, this time on the employee's side of the equation. Benefit calculations for the program are based on an average of the 35 highest earning years. Most older workers, then, are paying Social Security taxes at the full rate but receiving virtually no increase in their future benefits.

Elimination of all payroll taxes for those over 60 would not only leave more money in their weekly paychecks but also make them cheaper to employ for businesses, which would be spared their share of the payroll tax on these workers.

On the savings side, policymakers could temporarily quadruple the amount of savings that households headed by individuals 50 or older are allowed to put into retirement savings tax-free. This would allow for a more rapid replenishment of these accounts and serve as a valuable experiment in advance of a more systemwide move toward taxing consumption rather than savings and investment - a concept that is gaining traction in both parties.

These are just a few of the possible life rafts that could be deployed to rescue the sinking fortunes of the Busted Boomers. Candidates who fail to respond to the distress signals of this beleaguered cohort risk missing out on a titanic electoral opportunity.