The DCCC stepped up Medicare-centric campaigning Monday, launching the Medicare Action Center, DontEndMedicare.com. The website provides information on GOP town hall meetings and a stirring graphic comparing proposed GOP Medicare cuts ($165 million) to the amount of money lost on oil subsidies, offshoring, and tax breaks for the wealthy ($175 billion). You can also print out your very own protest sign, which reads, "Vote Republican, End Medicare." It's a forceful message. The problem is that it's not quite true. Of course, a more nuanced slogan like, "Vote Republican, precipitate a restructuring of Medicare that would cost seniors a lot more money" would be a less effective rallying cry. However, the DCCC's current Medicare message unnecessarily opens them to criticism.... A Democratic campaign focused on Republicans choosing to end Medicare -- when the Republicans would still maintain a program at least called Medicare -- is just asking to be ripped apart in the war of words that is campaign politics.

This, from Salon's War Room is just kind of dumb.

Don't tell the truth about a policy because PolitiFact, or the Washington Post might criticize you for it? Because it is the truth. While the Republicans might still want to call their voucher program "Medicare," that ain't what it is. Don't just take my word for it. Here's Krugman:

I know that serious people are supposed to be shocked, shocked at the Democrats calling the Ryan plan a plan to dismantle Medicare—but that’s just what it is. If you replace a system that actually pays seniors’ medical bills with an entirely different system, one that gives seniors vouchers that won’t be enough to buy adequate insurance, you’ve ended Medicare. Calling the new program “Medicare” doesn’t change that fact.

And Matty Yglesias:

“Medicare” refers to a single-payer universal health insurance program instituted by the Social Security Act of 1965. If a political movement committed to having that program “wither on the vine” and die puts forward a bill to abolish that program and replace it with a system of private vouchers, then it doesn’t matter whether or not the voucher program is still called Medicare. That’s what House Republicans voted to do, and there’s nothing even slightly misleading about calling this an effort to end Medicare. What’s misleading is the effort to use nomenclature to obscure the nature of the change.

Politico, yes, you can expect to say that the DCCC campaign is "misleading," and to start pearl-clutching over the possibility that Democrats are taking a hard-line—completely truthful—stance on an important issue. But Salon really should do better.