If we had one Dem for every Freepbagger at town halls hollering for a public option ...

[NNN0LHI]

... think we might have had a better chance of getting it?

This is one question I can't get out of my mind. If we had been as militant as they were would it have made a difference?

What do you think?

Don

[Sarah Ibarruri]

1. Please tell me how to do that and I'll start. I don't even know how to start lol

I do know how to canvass, how to donate, how to write letters, how to call Congress, and how to open my big, fat mouth to say what I believe. :-)

I do NOT know what one does about townhalls, or even what they are.

[Shagbark Hickory]

2. For the right price, you can hire a heckler and have someone bring guns to rallies.

[Cirque du So-What]

3. 'The squeaky wheel gets the grease' notwithstanding...

I wonder what the response to loud progressives in 'town hall'-type meetings would have been? I expect security would have been swift in silencing the progressive voices by any & all means, and that RW thugs would have been given free rein to harass - even to the point of violence. We have to assume that two sets of rules exist - one for RW hosebags and one for progressives - before making any plans toward countering loudmouths with loud mouths.

[OneGrassRoot]

4. Bill Maher said we need a "Donner Party"

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/08/07/bill-maher-liberal-tea-party_n_920268.html

It's hilarious but it also has merit, imho. :)

[boston bean]

5. I was at a Town Hall that summer and fought the baggers off the best I could.

Just me and my mum there.

Yet, I am a teabagger cause I don't believe the mandate is constitutional.

[obxhead]

6. There were.

They just weren't televised.

[NNN0LHI]

7. I was wondering if that may have been a possibility?

[TheKentuckian]

8. This is the obvious piece and at least one case a progressive shouter was

not only originally conflated with the Teabaggers but actually used as fake proof that the Teabaggers were racially balanced.

The media crafted a message and stuck with it. Pretending there was no liberal response isn't too far off from Reich wingers pretending their were no or very limited protests against the stupid wars.

Add to this the functional disadvantage in an argument of being on the side of doing SOMETHING but not being able to say what that would be because the mark was stuck in "Dr" Baucus' dissection lab against "hell no!" to whatever THEY imagined which could not be clearly and forcefully refuted in some cases and others like "death panels" served to derail any rational conversation on the matter at all.

The folks that control the debate in reality threw the whole deal to the dogs. The time for the town halls was before shit started going through committee not stalled up in the last one. Tactically, the whole deal was insane and ass backward.