Luckily for you, SS is politically unassailable. In the public domain, we put aside the fact that the old are the wealthiest demographic and exchange it for a sob story about grandma on fixed income who is barely making ends meet as it is. On top of that, the AARP and near-AARP crowd runs the country, with a 48-year old president considered extraordinarily young and the average voter age about 50 years old (thanks, James, for challenging me to look into that).
In other news, it's not really voter whimsy so much as our deeply held views about the individual and society that have changed. If those views have prevailed through a World War, a sixty-year police conflict, terrorist attacks on the nation, the end of the Cold War, the Civil Rights movement, a depression and a great recession, I feel comfortable in saying they'll last at least another forty years till we "retire".
Financially, I totally agree. If you want to retire at 30 or 35, it can make no difference to your planning that you're eligible for SS at 62-70. It is another safety net, but with that much time between retirement and receiving benefits, you really need a conservative SWR like 4% to ensure you're gonna make it.