Tea Party Madness to Sweep the Nation?

Aside from the issue of whether the congressional "town hall" has outlived its usefulness as a way for politicians and the public to interact, there's an important underlying question in those confrontations over health care reform now playing out. Do they represent an incipient 1994- or 1980-style backlash against Obama?

To most of us on the outside, the town-halls-gone-wild appear to reflect the intense feelings of a relatively small group of people who are very badly misinformed about what's actually happening in Washington. They're angry at Obama for all kinds of things the government isn't doing and has no plans to do. In the broadest sense, some of their suspicions are legitimate -- if government does have more power over health care, it will screw it up somehow. But the health care system is very badly screwed up already, and there appears to be no awareness of that fact in those rude, angry outbursts.

But is this the start of a good, old-fashioned right-wing populist prairie fire? The Atlantic's Marc Ambinder argued yesterday that, strictly in terms of the health care issue, the protestors and their organizers have overplayed their hand -- that they are alienating the independents who want a real political debate, not a shouting match, i.e., the voters who matter most to centrist Democrats who will make or break any health care bill.

Patrick Ruffini shot back, saying Ambinder is misreading things. His post, titled "Energy at the edges moves the center," cites the left's at-times over-the-top Iraq protests, ca. 2003 and 2004, as an example of something that seemed politically marginal at the time, with polls showing broad support for the war effort, but later became the majority view.

Nobody knows what's going to happen in politics. And there are signs of serious discontent with Democrats in the New Jersey and Virginia governor's races. But the circumstances here seem very different from 1980, 1994 - or 2003, for that matter. Ruffini's argument likens health care reform to Iraq. But it took several years of disastrous mismanagement and dysfunctional leadership from the White House to turn the public against the war -- and George W. Bush.

Obama has been in office six months. Assuming some kind of health care reform passes, it's unlikely to turn into an Iraq-like disaster. Most people will be only marginally affected, if at all. Many people will see their situations improve. There will be problems, no doubt. But "death panels" won't be killing grannies every day like IEDs were in Baghdad ca. 2006. And remember, unlike his predecessor Obama actually seems to know some things about making government institutions work. If some kind of health care reform doesn't pass (which I think is unlikely given the stakes), it will damage Obama. But it will also be over quickly.

In 1980, there was broad anger at, and structural problems within, the government and the Democratic Party. In the 1990s, those problems lingered: Bill Clinton was never elected with more than 50 percent of the vote. Obama won with 53 percent of the vote. Some of those Obama voters are no doubt disillusioned with what they've seen so far. But "government" is always a proxy for other things -- in this case, widespread economic distress, wrenching social change, etc. The town hall craziness is channeling some of that -- it is unfocused rage coming from a narrow segment of the population. But the circumstances in which we find ourselves are fluid: if the economy improves and health care reform passes, and America doesn't turn into Nazi Germany, that anger is unlikely to result in a huge anti-Obama backlash. In part because there just aren't any good alternatives right now.

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Comments

[krocklin]

I am not completely disappointed in Obama at all. He is an amazingly forceful speaker and provides cogent concise analysis of all the problems in our broken healthcare system.
He is committed to his beliefs and sincere about the need for reform.
I can't say why he has come up against such a powerful backlash exactly. Probably the answer is that Americans are just too ignorant and special interests too strong.
He is conciliatory by nature, but I don't think this is his fault or that he has made too many compromises. When he has he has tried to reverse that tendency and he does it with force.
He is just up against too much.
Americans supported the Iraq and Vietnam War and all its costs, but are afraid of the costs of improving a system which will just continue to waste their dollars at an increasing rate.
Citizens of other countries with superior and much cheaper healthcare systems are just more aware of what is good for them.

[despin]

If the backlash occurs and these fools come back into power, it'll be despondenc­y/exhausti­on/despair on a massive scale. Progressives and intellectuals will scream for the exits like 1930s Weimer Germans.

[WalkingOnEggshells]

Much of the Right is the "Religious Right" (i.e. Christian zealots) and I have found in online forums a good way to shock them out of their comfortable zombie-like mindset is to ask them their opinion of how THEY THINK Jesus would reply to this question:

"JESUS, DO YOU THINK THE RICHEST COUNTRY IN THE WORLD SHOULD FIND A WAY TO PROVIDE HEALTH CARE TO EVERYONE, OR SHOULD IT JUST REMAIN THAT SOME PEOPLE HAVE TO SUFFER WITHOUT, LIKE WOUNDED ANIMALS IN THE WOODS?"

[HansUnfeit]

JESUS WOULD TELL YOU THAT SUFFERING IS THE NATURAL STATE OF MOST OF HUMANITY AND THE ANIMAL KINGDOM!

You like caps?

[Gregoriodelmundo]

With misinformation abounding, paid bullies interrupting Town Hall meetings, and over 500 people losing their health care in Indiana alone, we have to wonder what is going on with the effort to produce a reasonable health care system.

Of course, the misinformation is being created and spread by the vested interests and their minions. Schlock radio, with its demagogic approach to confusing the issue, is being supported by big insurance. Soon-to-be-looking for-govern­ment-grant­s-for-retr­aining employees (paid bullies) of big insurance are regurgitating insurance company propaganda in loud voices at town meetings. Clueless ignorance-blinded followers of schlock radio jocks wobble along, giving their lame support, having deluded themselves into believing they are some kind of "patriots."

We must realize the irrationality and misinformation, consider its selfish, irrational sources, and get on with the noble task of health care reform.

Greg S.

[SSGVABEACH]

Thats right.

[den1953]

When jobs and the economy start to move in the positive trend you'll see less anger,as far as the tea baggers i would like to ask them where were you people while GW Bush & Dick Cheney were negotiating the deals that spent millions on Iraq and Halliburton there was no public outcry then. Where was your public outcry when GW Bush bailed out the banks,or Katrina,or the Iowa floods,how about your protest of the drug deal the Republicans did for the seniors through medicare?

[steve-in-abq]

You should try to pretend for a minute that there are millions of citizens that are not political junkies and/or die-hard (choose a political party) in this country. Yes, there are millions of these people. They just live their lives and get by. They have, for the most part, ignored the expansion of the federal government for decades (under R's & D's). They put up with the expansion because they got something out of it. They have become, partially, and in some cases fully, dependent on this huge overbearing government. Some of them woke up, then they woke the friends. Now, they are 'an angry mob' as some would say. Millions of people are tired of the statists. Maybe the statists' days are numbered and we will be free again. Or, maybe I'm just dreaming.

[agb100]

The writer: "To most of us on the outside, the town-halls­-gone-wild appear to reflect the intense feelings of a relatively small group of people who are very badly misinformed about what's actually happening in Washington."

Huffington Post writers see themselves as on the "outside?"

Small group of people?

The fact is, the POLLS SHOW...the MAJORITY of Americans don't want

1. Obamacare

2. Cap and Trade

I rest my case.

[idest]

Care to site a poll? Yeah, I thought not.

[Withliberty]

How about starting with Gallup and Pew?

[Boyaca]

You don't have a case. as a matter of fact, I don't think you have ever had an original thought. You just spout any lie told you by the insurance companies, or any other corporation with a dog in this fight.

[PeterNY]

Wanna throw a monkey wrench in the far right's misinformation?
Here's how:
Show up at a town meeting wearing a T shirt embossed with the words,
SAY NO TO SOCIALISM - ABOLISH MEDICARE
When irate seniors approach you, tell them that you're a loyal American on board with the program.
Tell them that Sean, Rush, Michael Savage and Bill O'Reilly sent you.
Tell them that you can't support socialism in any form.
And finally tell them, "Together, we can send this message to Obama."
Let's see who gets in line.

[MamamiaT]

OMG!! Brillant!

[JanP]

Is Tea party Madness anything like the Anti-Iraq War madness?

How about all those posters that made Bush look like Hitler?

How about MoveO n.Org's ad foir "General Betray Us"?

You just can't stand soemone standing up agaisnt big government, can you?

[ElementalPraxis]

The Left does not accept or use the phrase 'Big Government'. In the Newspeak Encyclopedia, there is only a listing for 'Better Government'. Any effort to grow government is always categorized as an effort to 'make government better'. By terminating language that refers to the size of government, they have made it impossible to speak with prejudice against any expansion of government.

Double Plus Good.

[cabanas]

When the liberals protest: They are political activists. Whey they shout and march up and down: They are committed. But when independents or conservatives do the same thing they are a mob of dumb people. I guess it is because we are opposing them. Last time I checked, 7:56 PM, the left does not have a monopoly on political activism and profound belief.

[llisa]

No, it really is because they are a mob of dumb people. They need to become informed on the issues. They do not realize that they are padding the pockets of Big Pharma while making sure that they themselves will not be insured if they should lose their jobs or be unable to pay exorbitant (and rising) insurance premiums.

[JanP]

Actually the people are protesting because they have read portions of the proposed bills. The are written in obfuscating language. If this stuff is passed in its present form, committees will be able to regualte anything and everything they want.

[Imperial61]

The people screaming like fools at these meetings consider themselves the mythic solid backbone of America.However there stupidty,canned rhetoro,lack of manner's and disheveled appearance is only a symbol of it's decline...Plus the Htler Third Reich stuf thrown around by everyone,the result of intense WW2 propaganda(BY A VERY LIBERAL FDR and other liberal/ne­oconservat­ives,and subsequently trumped by Hollywood and other groups is alway'is alway's used to justify every cause,.Unless the shallow comic book history of that period is cleared up by responsible and courageous commentators this,OBAMA,and or anyone is Hitler garbage will continue with increasingly dangerous intensity.

[Boyaca]

How can you say a person is not dumb, when he is over 65 and shouts out in public , "the government should keep its hands off Medicare?" how f**king dumb is that? Missinformed, dumd, a mob? Kind of a fitting description for the protesters I see at those town hall meetings. Yes fitting indeed.

[danielet]

BORN AS ANIMALS, WE BECOME HUMAN THROUGH EDUCATION. Since 1960s US education degenerated but life has grown in complexity. "Birthers" enjoyed Bush's "long vacation from complexity," think they have the AUTHORITY of opinion but not RESPONSIBILITY of understanding complexity. Like Bush and your dog, they live by their "gut," not by mastering complexity. Healthcare is now paid from YOUR pocket. The older we get, the more of it we use. FOR-PROFIT-CORPS take BIG scoop from the pot for management, investments, executive salaries, and a lot for dividends to stockholders-- BILLIONS in total!! No problem when you're young and healthy, but when you had long payed into your health-insurance without using it, to about 50. THAT'S WHEN THE FOR-PROFIT CORPS CUT YOU OUT SO THEY CAN MAKE THEIR PROFITS. Medicare was created because there's no profit in taking care of old people. But MEDICATE begins only at 65, leaving you uncovered for the i5 medically most dangerous years of life. OBAMA WANTS TO MAKE SURE YOU ARE COVERED UNTIL MEDICARE. LESS for for-profit corps means MORE in the pot for your care. Universal Medicare means that all your life what you pay will go ONLY for the care you need. Tell that to the howling hayinas at the Townhalls!

[llisa]

They can't hear that for all their howling.

I watched a clip of one woman who shouted out a ridiculous question but was given the courtesy of a thoughtful answer. When interviewed and asked what she thought of the answer, she replied that she really wasn't paying attention. This, in a nutshell, is the problem.

[ritgar]

That's ok, she wouldn't have understood the answer, anyway.

[siegfried89]

I can understand the "senior anger" if reforming health care will end Medicare Advantage Plans. That would be a severe blow to low and middle income seniors who can only afford the basic Medicare premium of about $100 a month.

[XME]

"But the circumstances in which we find ourselves are fluid: if the economy improves and health care reform passes, and America doesn't turn into Nazi Germany, that anger is unlikely to result in a huge anti-Obama backlash."

Very true...and the people who are bashing Obama now and who hate him now, will hate him in 12 months and 24 months, no matter how well he does.

The entire point of trying to defeat everything he does is this: if what he wants passes and is successful, they will be less able to proclaim that his is "destroying America". If it doesn't pass, they can go on AND proclaim that they helped save us from him and his destructive policies.

[MamamiaT]

no, if Obama can pass his agenda, and it is succesfull, the idiots look like, well, um.... idiots

[XME]

They already do.

[dnegri]

Obama needs to take a page from Ross Perot. Don't just use pretty language, don't just use charm...don't just cite statistics...but have a couple of "WOW!" charts....perhaps one clearly showing the rising rate of health premiums, with a nice flat line for median income! And another showing the rate of overall increase of health care.....What Perot did with the dollar (I believe) and graphs on national TV Obama needs to do with health care on national TV. No more than two or three, but something that is visual.

[Chanrazig]

This is a great idea!

[lindro]

The writer is absolutely on key. I've attended several town hall meetings also attended by the media. However, when the media (TV or newspaper) reports the story, it is focused on the noise and not on the vote taken following the meeting when the audience gives a show of hands on which plan they would favor:
1.) no change
2.) reform of health insurance
3.) reform PLUS a public health care option
4.) single payer (like medicare)

The audiences in all MY town meetings voted for option 3. Seeing that these town halls were held in a very predominantly Republican area, the vote in itself was significant.

However the only report given by the attending media was about the shouters, who, incidentally did not present a single "fact" that was correct.

This is how the media steers public opinion.

[Carrie-On]

And, it feeds right in to our grossly uneducated populace in the U.S., now. The downing of education in the nation has not been a mistake; it's been intended. That's why people grab onto the least bit of information, and are totally unable to seek out the truth; worse, few Americans have a clue about the process that a "bill" goes through to the point of becoming edict.

I see this in my own offspring, and for the time, effort, swear, tears, and money I spent on them, I'm shocked; although, I have to admit that the one with the lowest IQ, who reads trash novels, is also the same one screaming that the POTUS "is another HITLER!" I am fed up with this thinking, regardless of who thinks it - or doesn't think as the case seems to be.

The media is designed to pander to the lowest common denominator, for their 'hits,' via the Satellite boxes and cable paid for by those who often cannot afford food. The only news worth listening to is BBC or PBS/NPR. The rest scream at us - as the daytime show 'starz' do, too.

It's time the POTUS stopped pandering. The administration is making every effort to save peoples lives, health and preventive care, for all so let's just do it, and stop trying to please "the kids." Every parent recognizes that action. Kids don't understand "adult things," that does not mean we should not care for, and protect them.

[alex92ut]

I really have a hard time believing that America has been deliberately dumbed down. Teacher's unions have made it impossible for school districts to weed out the teachers who should not be teachers of children.

[JanP]

If our population is grossley uneducated, cna you blame it on public schools?

[DavePalen]

It kind of sucks when the media occasionally tells the truth and stops panting every time Obama speaks doesn't it?

[MTinMO]

First of all, that comment has absolutely no bearing on the comment or the story. I think the president does a good job of telling the truth on his own and doesn't need the media or anyone else to do it for him. What the media needs to do is quit focusing on the nut jobs and focus on the people who are there to ask real questions and not try to out shout the speakers. These nut jobs are keeping real people from real questions and real answers and the media needs to ignore them.

[alex92ut]

We are real. We aren't angry because Obama is president, we're angry about the attempt by government to take over private business. We're angry about the money government is spending. We want to hold on to our freedom to choose what we want even if it is the wrong choice.
How can we have confidence in a government that ruined Social Security and everything it has taken control of? President Obama made our argument when he said in New Hampshire that " FedEx and UPS are doing just fine. It's the post office having problems."
The "Cash for Clinkers" deal is going to have more losers than winners. The poor can't afford to use the program, used cars that they usually buy will be more expensive because the gov is crushing the cars traded in, and parts for older cars will be harder to find and more expensive.
The sub prime mess has hurt lower income families more than it has hurt anyon else.
The stimulus pkg hasn't created permanent jobs. Only 1/10 has been spent. Why won't Geithner give back the TARP monies that have been repaid?

There is much more for us to protest against but mostly we are the naive ones who love our country the way it was founded and when we see a concentrated effort to change it into something it was never intended to be we react.

[write2bheard]

We love our country too, and we love all of its citizens. They all deserve a chance to be healthy -- that chance can best be attained by a cooperative effort of all our citizens. Business and private enterprise have had their chance and they didn't take it -- always profits before people and the children die. We cry in horror at the murder of one child, but not a tear is shed on behalf of those that are murdered by lack of medical care. Those who demonstrate are the same ones who abhor abortions yet they also demonstrate to allow private enterprise to continue to murder children through lack of care. CHOOSE LIFE!

[alex92ut]

I cry over the one aborted for no reason at all except it is unwanted.
No child whose parents can communicate their need is murdered by lack of medical care in this country. We are a very generous nation.
But my point is still relevant. The government has never run anything more effciently than the private sector.
Let's try tort reform first. This would bring the cost of health insurance down. And cheaper health insurance is what we really need.
Then the ones who have an option to buy insurance through their work ,but opt out because of cost, would be able to afford it. We have Medicaid for the people who simply can't afford insurance at any cost.
There is a hospital near me that will not turn anyone away. I know there are more like them all over the US. They work out a way for the patient to repay them no matter how long it takes.
Government interference is not the answer.

[squarebird]

A chance to be healthy? Name one child who has been 'murdered' in the US due to lack of access to medical care. There are not any, and that is not even the subject of the reform. No one has even hinted that children are dying under our present set of systems, the argument is that we can make the best health care system in history be even better. The counter argument is that there is no such thing as one best system (and if there were, it would deteriorate over time due to lack of competition) and we should keep our current system of systems.

[MTinMO]

Now with health care. Do you have any idea of how many working people don't have health insurance? How many families aren't covered? How many businesses don't offer any coverage to employees? They don't pay enough to buy your own because the price is too high. . With the cost of living going up all the time but the wages don't keep up. Yet many business owners are doing just fine with their McMansions and cars and vacations but they don't want to spread the wealth to those who labor for them. They wouldn't be where they are without those who work for them but they allow the gap between the haves and the have nots grows by leaps and bounds all the while costs grow and wages don't.

And the insurance companies. How is it fair to have insurance you pay premiums on and then when you need it, they cancel you? Why should someone be deemed unworthy of insurance because of a "pre-existing condition"? And if you say it's just business, then we have a business, insurance companies, deciding who lives and dies, who gets treated and who doesn't. Personally, I would trust the government more than someone for who it is a business/monetary decision. Citizens of the United States of America, should have a right to health care. Business and industry hasn't done the job of delivering it to all and they have had a very long time to do it. Generations of time. Times up.

[Quitcherbichin]

You people need to understand that all of the anger being generated in these town hall meetings is not just about health care. Obama's fantasy plan for health care is just the straw that broke the camels back. People are incensed about high taxes with the specter of even more to come, cap and trade, bank bailouts, government takeover of GM, environmental laws carried to the extreme, racial quota's, activist organizations such as ACORN blatantly breaking the law yet never being called for it, illegal immigration run wild and government social programs being exploited by people who live, and have lived, on the government dole for generations. Lets not forget the two DEMOCRAT members of congress who are personally responsible for starting the housing crisis with their demands that lending institutions give loans to people who had no hope of paying the money back, Mssrs. Bonnie Fwank and Chris "I didn't know I was getting a special deal" Dodd.

This is just a partial list of things that have set off the so called "Tea Party Mob". Yes, the left has finally got the right fired up...and they ain't going away.

[ElementalPraxis]

Great post. The Left does not want to accept that the political roots of most of the people at these protests are not in the corporate Republican party. Their roots are in the OLD Democratic party- but that party abandoned them, and became the Junior Party of Globalism and Wall Street, partner in crime with the equally compromised modern Republican party.

These people are not taking a stance against the Left. If there still was a real Left in America, these people would be in it. They're taking a stance against being ignored by BOTH parties, as Quitcherbichin explains above.

[MTinMO]

You need to explain how government is attempting to take over any private business that didn't hold out their hand for the government to take? The banks and Wall Street asked for help while Bush was still in office and got it. All the experts said if the help wasn't given we risked a financial collapse worse than anything we have seen. The American auto companies were failing- in part because they didn't do what they should have but part of that is all our faults. We didn't demand the government require higher gas mileage on all cars and trucks and we the buyers didn't demand it either. until gas hit over $4.00 a gallon we sure didn’t want those gas guzzlers any more. We knew the risk on oil prices and the pollution factor but we didn't act. Now if we didn't help them out, thousands would be out of work and health care and pensions and a torrent of unemployed would be unleashed on an already hurting country. How is that going to help? And if they are paying the money back- what’s the problem?