Put a Damper on Outrage

As of March 2024, we have all heard about town hall meetings with, or more correctly, about, Republican members of Congress.  The Democrats are quite unhappy with how things are going in our government.  We have probably all seen videos of those meetings, some with and some without our representative attending.  (For the moment, representative means any person elected to represent us.)  Our representatives are excoriated, in person or in absentia.

However, there are significant problems in the conduct of these meetings.  Perfectly understandable, but problematic all the same.  Most of the meetings I have seen on the news are essentially a free-for-all.  Someone asks a question or makes a statement and the crowd erupts.  When the representative is a Republican, as soon as they begin to speak, the crow erupts.

Democrats, we need to tamp down our anger a bit and think about how we expect our representative to respond in that situation.  If you were up there on the stage, in his shoes, what would you do?  Knowing what to expect, would you even show up?  I suspect not.

I have looked up a few numbers and find that, nationwide, each member of the House of Representatives has on the order of 350,000 citizens in their district.  Darrell Issa, elected to the closest Republican district to me, received 213,625 votes in the 2024 election.  Presume that 3,000 show up to his absentee town hall meetings.  This is rather insignificant in comparison to over 213,000 who voted Republican in his district.  Presume the numbers are similar for all nine of the Republican representatives in California. 

Should they really care about those absentee town hall meetings?

Yes, they will care, but not as much as we hope they will.  And when 3000 people show up just to yell at you regardless of what you say, and when there are on the order of 200,000 who voted for you who will not be present, would you show up?  I don’t think so.

So what can we Democrats do?

The answer is easier said than done, but needs to be said.  And done.

We need to organize.  We need to gather together at our Democrat party meetings and decide what to ask of our Republican representatives, and how to ask it.  Select one or a very few representatives to take the floor at these town hall meetings and pose the questions.  When our Representative takes a position that is not congruent with our position, we must let our local representative control the floor.  No shout outs or disruptive behavior.  Our fellow Democrats can challenge our representative.  They might even ask the audience for a shout out.  But after that shout out, the citizens must hold their tongues and let those selected speak for us.  A free for all accomplishes very little and may often cause harm.  In any case, as much as it may be temporarily enjoyable, while it may get headlines and air time on the news, it does not look good for Democrats.

Our republic is facing the most dangerous crisis since the Civil War.  Trump, his administration, and indeed both houses of Congress (on the whole), are actively working to destroy democracy. 

We need to become a team and work together to save our democracy.