Our new book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics. It includes a chapter on congressional and state elections.
Rep. Doug LaMalfa, the Republican who represents much of California’s rural north, had barely begun his prepared remarks at a town hall in Chico early Monday when a chorus of boos and jeers overpowered him.
The raucous interjections didn’t relent for nearly 90 minutes.
The crowd of more than 650 people at the local Elks Lodge peppered him with obscenity-laden comments and slammed him for his vote for President Donald Trump’s budget bill, which cuts more than $1.1 trillion in federal spending for Medicaid, Medicare and plans under the Affordable Care Act over the next decade. The crowd excoriated LaMalfa for supporting legislation they said will “devastate” rural hospitals and hurt vulnerable people with disabilities and poor families.
But LaMalfa claimed the legislation makes “no cuts to the people themselves” in California’s Medicaid program, known as Medi-Cal, and instead only targets “waste, fraud and abuse” – a common and misleading line that House Republicans across the country have employed to defend the legislation.
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The in-person, open mic town hall has gradually become a relic in the age of social media, as fewer elected officials are willing to prostrate themselves in today’s hyperpartisan era. House Republicans even discouraged their members from hosting face-to-face forums after a wave of negative headlines out of viral town hall confrontations – including with their own GOP supporters – earlier this year.
Nicholas Wu, Cassandra Dumay and Mia McCarthy at Politico:
Such scenes of angry constituents confronting lawmakers are nothing new. They were commonplace in 2009 as Democrats pressed forward with a health care overhaul and in 2017 when Republicans sought to undo it.
This time around, there is a fierce debate underway about whether the town hall explosions are part of a genuine backlash to GOP governance in Washington — one that could presage another wave election as seen in 2010 and 2018 — or just another reflection of America’s political polarization.
Many Republicans are dismissing the outbursts, concluding they have been choreographed by Democrats and groups aligned with them and do not reflect genuine voter sentiment. Some — including Trump — have claimed without evidence that paid protesters are responsible.
“I think Democrats have been organized to actually act out in town halls, and I think if you’re going to have a town hall where you’re inviting people to come in with the intent of protesting, that’s what you’re going to get,” Sen. Mike Rounds (R-S.D.) said Tuesday.
But left-of-center activists say the GOP dismisses voters’ outrage at their peril. Groups might be helping to publicize and organize protests around lawmakers’ events, they say, but that is merely harnessing a real grass-roots backlash to what Republicans are pursuing in Washington.
