Were there Town Hall meetings to pitch the Iraq War to the American people?

[oberliner]

I do not believe that there were. If there were, I don't remember much coverage for them.

What is interesting to remember is that there were numerous rallies and marches protesting the potential for war in Iraq, yet none of the "You work for us!" and "Our voice will be heard" type shouting directly at representatives that has gotten so much air time and is being spun by the media as being indicative of American opposition to the health care plan.

Were there not greater numbers of Americans who were opposed to the Iraq War who were ignored and/or marginalized and whose wishes were completely disregarded by the government?

I do not understand why the Beck/Limbaugh/Hannity followers have been able to dominate the news around this issue the way that they have while the larger numbers of earnest Iraq War protesters were so readily dismissed.

Does it speak to the difference in tactics? Are large-scale marches less effective than these Town Hall disruptions? Or is it a function of the media and the way that they choose to cover these events? If that is the case, wouldn't it behoove progressives to take some pages out of the RW playbook in order to have the same kind of impact?

I am trying to wrap my mind around how and why Beck/Limbaugh/Hannity/et al are able to achieve their goals so successfully.

[jimshoes]

1. Same reason Clinton got crucified about everything he did

and and mush for brains got a pass on everything. Unless we control the media nothing is going to change. And it isn't likely we're going to be controlling the media anytime soon.

[oberliner]

5. Can't we adjust our tactics to use the media advantageously?

I don't see why we can't adjust our strategies accordingly.

[tabasco]

21. Exactly right.

Propaganda works and people are gullible.

[oberliner]

23. Why can't we use propaganda as well as they do?

That's the part I don't understand.

[jimshoes]

25. I wish I knew the answer to that one

I'm sure it can be done, maybe start tossing the fairness doctrine around, that seems to make them go apoplectic.

[tabasco]

26. Liberals don't own the media.

We do have the advantage of having truth on our side.

[oberliner]

27. No one owns the internet!

Perhaps the best way to get the truth out (so to speak) is online.

[Warren Stupidity]

2. No we had a national lie-a-thon 24/7 from CorpMedia.

[Mika]

4. Phil Donahue had one, then, highest ratings be damned, he got shitcanned. n/t

[dugaresa]

3. yes, there were townhalls to gauge the temperature of the folks on the ground

i went to one that Arlen Specter hosted.

It was basically the same bullshit. In fact my favorite was the crazy lady, older woman with a hat that had about 30 "I love USA" pins on it and miss-matched clothing who stood up and said she had evidence that Saddam Hussein was funding Timothy McVeigh. It was so laughable, it caused folks to snicker and roll their eyes at her, and yet dumb Specter actually behaved as if he wanted to have a closed door meeting with this woman and her important information.

[oberliner]

6. I just don't see why the Limbaugh/Hannity/Beck crowd isn't shut out of the debate

Democrats have the Presidency and comfortable majorities in Congress.

Why not push through legislation and if "the people" are unhappy with the results they can vote their representatives out?

Isn't that the idea behind "you work for us" ?

Edit to add:

Point being that they won't be able to since this vocal minority is just that - a minority. Most people don't buy in to the RW talk show host junk.

At least I hope not.

[western mass]

7. Easy to understand: we have a RW media

And you're forgetting that BOTH parties in congress supported the Iraq War.

[oberliner]

12. Good point about both parties supporting the war

However, don't both parties support health care reform?

McCain seemed to talk it up on the campaign trail if I remember correctly.

[lunatica]

8. You're watching the power of Corporatocracy at work

You should think of it in terms of who owns them, not what they do to earn their keep. Beck/Limbaugh/Hannity/et al are doing what they're being paid to do. What they personally think may or may not be what they blather on about. I'm sure every one of them, well maybe with the exception of Beck, don't believe any of the shit they spew. For example, all the deather crap. No one believes that shit except the few who are being frightened.

And shutting them out isn't the solution because that's anathema to Democracy. That's what the Bush administration did to us with their Free Speech Zones, and their vetted town halls and their open ravaging of the coffers and redistribution to the wealthy.

What we need to do is exactly what we're doing. Present facts and the truth at every opportunity. It may take longer for us to win but that's because we fight fair.

[oberliner]

10. Very good points - here is my response

I guess I am suggesting that Obama and the Democrats ought to go ahead and put forward and pass legislation to reform health care without having to explain over and over again why its a good idea in the face of nonsensical shouting.

The American people voted for Obama and one of the issues he talked about was health care. He explained his position - Americans voted for him - so he doesn't have to explain it all again over and over, especially in light of all the manipulation going on by those RW hosts. Just go ahead and get it done.

[lunatica]

15. It would be political suicide for him and for progress

Thom Hartman has been laying it out this week. The Corporatocracy really does run the show. The health insurance companies are thinking of the Trillions of projected dollars they will make in the near future so they're laying out millions in Washington DC right now to assure that there is no health reform that can hurt them. What they are spending has already exceeded what Obama and McCain spent in their entire campaigns over a 2 year period and it's a mere drop in the bucket to them.

Also the legislation that he would pass is still being written. There are two bills right now. One in the House and one in the Senate and both are in the process of being written and dickered over and being hammered into a working bill which will be passed each in the House and the Senate. After that both bills go to another committee where they are dickered over and hammered on again for a final bill which then gets passed and presented to Obama for signing.

Right now he's selling it. He can't pass it because it isn't on his desk yet.

[oberliner]

18. In response to your points

My argument is that the House and Senate can go ahead and work on the bills without opening themselves up to the endless nonsense that is going on at these town halls.

Obama himself had suggested months ago that a bill be put on his desk by August.

I do not understand the current approach that has now resulted in "end of life counseling" component of the bill(s) to be excised based on the RW talk show host's lies.

The longer this goes on, the less popular it seems health care reform becomes. And it was a very popular idea during the campaign - so much so that it seemed a given that some kind of health care reform was needed (candidates from both parties promoted this notion).

My argument is that Obama and members of Congress ought to pull away from these counterproductive town halls and go ahead and work on getting a bill together to place on the President's desk.

[lunatica]

22. I disagree that it's less popular now

Right now there's an organized and very vocal minority of people who have to be bused into these meetings from other places which shows there aren't that many of them in each community. These loud people are also not speaking for themselves. They aren't thinking about anything relevant because they're just repeating the talking points and doing the kind of disrupting they're instructed to do. It appears to be a lot of people, but it's really not. You also don't get these disruptions in any Republican town halls, because the same people bused into the Democratic ones are being shuttled to the Republican ones.

Obama hasn't lost anyone who he won over with this health issue during the campaign and he won't unless he gives in to the Health Insurance Industry. We may not all be happy with everything he does but he's still our guy.

I also think a lot of Democrats are going out of their way to go to these town halls just to try to make sure the protesters get left outside. I've never been big on going to a town hall because I don't think they're effective the way they were a couple of hundred years ago, but if one were being held near me now I would go just to push back at these shitheads in some way.

I think a lot of people are thinking like this.

[BOG PERSON]

9. No, there were mass rallies for it though. n/t

[oberliner]

11. Were they productive at all?

It seemed to me that the Iraq War was inevitable and no amount of rallies was going to change the march to war.

In this case, it appears that the goings-on at the health care town hall meetings are actually impeding the progress of passing reform legislation.

[BOG PERSON]

13. Well look at this way:

The pro-war ralliers got what they wanted. The anti-war ralliers got ignored.

[chelsea0011]

14. And those rallies, thousands upon thousands of people, were mostly ignored

or in the case of SNL made fun of. The SNL skit showed a bunch of people at an anti-war rally and joke was that no one knew what the rally was for or some thought they were protesting animal rights or saving the whale. And that was the tone back then. You couldn't say a peep lest you get branded as anti-American. If there were town hall meetings for the war back then any protester would have been dragged down thrown in jail. You betcha!

[OHdem10]

16. Conservatives(are a movement) Think tanks, Congresspeople, Some

Rich Republican Groups with their most effective Tool--Radio
Hate Jocks spread out in every state. Starting with 2000 election,
Bush V Gore. Remember the Bus Load of "Heavies who walked in practically
took over procedures. Noise, Noise gets coverage. Intimidation
works.--at least it appears that way at times.

Then there was the Schiavo Case. Oh yes, Remember Immigration
Reform was stopped dead in its tracks. Oops, they facilitated
getting Grey Davis out of the Governorship and Ah-NOLD into California
Governorship.

A closer look and you will trail yourself back the same people.

yes, Limbaugh is an important player. Hannity Beck make their
contributions. We just know them because of TV. Sometimes the
jocks we do not know are doing the real stuff. Free Republic
used to be the hangout for some.

Health Care Reform and guess who and what is happening????

The stuff one picks up monitoring TV. Huh

[oberliner]

20. Is Liberalism/Progressivism not a movement as well?

Is there not an equivalent movement on the left to what you described about the right?

[leftstreet]

17. Any YouTube links to the Wall Street Bailout town halls?

I missed them

:shrug:

[oberliner]

19. Good point

When the government wants to do something - they can go ahead and do it.

I think the lesson is that these town halls lead to a diminished understanding of the issues rather than a better one.

If there had been no town halls and a bill was ready for Obama to sign by August as he had requested, no one would have been "concerned" about death panels and other such nonsense.

[Downtown Hound]

24. I was in college at the time

And we had some schmuck from the State Department come and try and pitch it to us. To this day I regret not causing a scene and being taken out of the room in handcuffs, but I was still rather shy about confronting authority back then. I've made up for it since. The whole thing was designed to prevent any real discussion or challenge lies that the human cyborg on the stage said. We could write our questions down on a piece of paper, fold them, and put them in a box. Then some people would read them and decide if they were appropriate, and if they were then they were given to the cyborg to read and answer on stage. It was impossible to have any kind of debate or challenge the many lies and half truths that came out of his mouth.

Funny thing though. That very same week, in the school paper, there was a piece about how the campus police had just received a whole new bunch of crowd control weapons, including pepper balls and CS gas. The cynical part of me might think that they were worried about students rebelling or something, hence why the cyborg was there in the first place.

[obliviously]

28. I remember a lot of protests

over the war. No one has ever been silenced. Yet!

[nadinbrzezinski]

29. Actually we did, sort off

Chenney spoke before the VFW a couple times, so did Bush and the we do not want a mushroom cloud over an American City, (Rice) came at another meeting.

The difference... the crowds were selected.