Angry Town Hall Attendees Need To Look In The Mirror

Across red state America from Idaho to Florida, congressional Republicans are returning to their hometowns to face angry voters. Those conservative reps brave enough to attend Town Hall meetings are being met with large hostile crowds who are demanding answers about their support for Trump and his toxic agenda.

And I don’t get it.

The majority of the people attending these Town Hall meetings are Republicans. They likely voted for the representative they are now booing and probably voted for Trump. Yet here they are criticizing the person who they knew was a conservative, who they knew would support the Republican presidential candidate, and who they knew would follow Donald Trump’s lead. They’re mad at their representative, when they should be mad at themselves for their ill informed, self-defeating choices.

There’s a ton of analysis out there about why people continue to vote against their own best interests, but what does it take to get them to stop? Do they really believe a Democrat would do a worse job then their current congressperson, who they now revile? Red state Americans willingly voted for a president who was an avowed racist (a point in his favor, I guess), a misogynist, a serial liar and a corrupt businessman basically because he wasn’t Hillary Clinton or another Democrat. And then they are disappointed with the results. 

How bad will things have to get before Republican voters realize the leaders of their party have no interest in helping them or making their lives better? And how long will it take for Democrats to wake up and realize that neo-liberal, corporate-sponsored candidates like Hillary Clinton and John Kerry won’t win the hearts and minds of Middle Americans?

I know it can be hard to admit your own mistakes, but when your very survival and the survival of your children is at stake — and with Trump at the helm this isn’t hyperbole  — isn’t it time to reconsider where your loyalty lies?

Throw the bums out? Then what?

In a new NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll, 60 percent of respondents say that if they had the chance to vote to defeat and replace every single member of Congress, including their own representative, they would.

Although these results clearly convey the public’s anger and frustration at the current stalemate in Washington, the sentiments are disingenuous to say the least. The very people who want to throw the bums out are the same people who routinely send conservative extremists like Michele Bachmann of Minnesota, Steve King of Iowa and Louie Gohmert of Texas back to Congress time and time again.

The poll results might be reassuring if I felt that voters had learned something from the current dilemma, but I doubt that there have been many true political epiphanies. Of course, the mainstream media has once again failed the public with its “pox on both their houses” reporting; ignoring the reality that this is a Republican engineered disaster.

I’m all for throwing the bums out, but I don’t think the majority of voters, especially those in red states, are yet well informed enough to clearly distinguish between demagogues and democrats.