Sep 15 Betty's Secret Non-Town-Hall

I was minding my own business at about 2:00 last Monday afternoon, when I learned from Twila Brase through Facebook that Rep. Betty McCollum was going to give the public an opportunity to ask questions about health care.  This "DFL Town Hall Rally" was scheduled at 5:30 pm on Monday, at the Weyerhauser Chapel at Macalester College.

I actually didn't know it was advertised as a "DFL Town Hall Rally" until I got to the event.  But doesn't the phrase "DFL Town Hall Rally" sound contradictory, oxymoronic?  If they said "DFL Rally," it would be clearly understood as a partisan event.  If they said "Town Hall Meeting," I believe it would be generally understood as a non-partisan event.  So the very phrase "DFL Town Hall Rally" sounded odd to me. 

As I headed to Macalester, I was thinking to myself "Whose idea was it to have a town hall meeting at 5:30 pm?  There are a lot of people who aren't going to be able to make it."  I then realized that this wasn't a bug, it was a feature, a mechanism of keeping inconvenient people away from the event.

When I got to Macalester College, one of Teresa Collett's volunteers saw me, and we started chatting.  He showed me the press release for the event, which was issued on Friday, the traditional day where news goes to be buried.  And not just any Friday, mind you, the Friday three days before the event, and the Friday the day before September 11, where the nation's attention is elsewhere.  The only media outlet that covered the event was Minnesota Public Radio, which let the abovementioned "Town Hall Rally" oddity pass without comment.

It should be noted that there was a sign-in sheet for the people who showed up.  Since there was a email address to RSVP to in the press release, I was expecting to be asked if I had RSVP'd for this event.  To the credit of the organizers, I wasn't.  On the door of the Chapel, a handwritten sign read "Doors open at 5:15."  I thought to myself "This isn't a Town Hall Meeting, this is a flash mob!  A secret, moonless midnight flash mob!" 

On further review, it wasn't quite that bad, as about 100 people showed up.  But it was a much different crowd than the people who showed up at the real Town Hall Meeting in August of 2009.  The large majority of people attending were DFLers, and not just DFLers, but DFL volunteers, DFL activists, the DFL equivalent of people like Andy Aplikowski and Kevin Ecker.  There were a few Republicans in the audience, a small, grumbly knot on the left side of the house.

Betty welcomed the audience, but then addressed us as the DFL volunteers who were going to go knocking door-to-door for her and the other candidates on the platform.  As the other candidates gave their speeches, I was thinking "So, exactly when are we getting to the 'Town Hall' part, exactly?"

There was about a half-hour of a 90 minute event blocked out for the Town Hall part.  There were four questions asked and answered, and three of them came from hostile questioners.  

One man mentioned how Obamacare had significantly driven up the cost of his business.  Betty responded that the insurance industry was putting profit before transparency.  She asked "If you had the chance to deduct 50% of the cost, would you like that?"  I don't know whether that is related to Obamacare as it stands, or to pending legislation.

A woman read from a piece of paper, asking "What portion of the $14 trillion deficit do you attribute to your votes?"  Betty gave a long, rambling non-answer, ending with a boast that she didn't apologize for any of her votes.  She didn't mention her vote for the stimulus, or her votes for the Obama budgets with $2.4 trillion of deficits.  I found Betty's non-answer to be truly despicable.  A constituent had asked a serious question, and gotten a seriously unserious stiffarm non-answer in return, with a boast on the end as an exclamation point.  No constituent deserves to be treated that way by their Representative.  I was wondering if any of the DFL activists in the house thought to themselves "She didn't answer her question, did she?"

I'm going to say something I said in the previous post I wrote on this subject.

BETTY MCCOLLUM HAS TOWN HALL ENVY.

She doesn't do well in uncontrolled environments, but she realizes that it's not a good thing to give the impression she's avoiding her constituents.  This event is her response.

This event was a Potemkin Town Hall meeting, an event created for the purpose of being able to claim that a Town Hall meeting took place.  The scheduling, the publicity, the audience made it nothing of the sort.  It was a treachery within further treacheries.  While one of the rallies will be held at the Hallie Q. Brown Community Center, the last one will be held in a union hall, a highly sympathetic location.  There's nothing wrong with rallies.  There's a time and a place for everything.  But Betty McCollum shouldn't use the phrase "Town Hall" in the description of these events.  A commenter at the Minnesota Public Radio article had this to say:

Does anyone else think Collett may be gaining ground? I haven't seen this much activity from Betty in a while.