Delaware Dem and I attended Mike Castle’s townhall yesterday. You can read this thread for a play-by-play of what happened.
My impression is that Castle delivered two opposing messages: the need for reform and slow down what’s the hurry. The eyebrow raising moment of the night is when Castle said in his opening that he thought the filibuster rule was unAmerican. Interesting.
Somehow despite about a 50/50 split between health care reform supporters and status quo supporters, the questioners were 90% against reform. The general talking points were slow down, 1000-page bill and that the government sucks. Most questions were a variation on that them with a few even crazier wingnuts thrown in for color. There was quite a bit of boring speechifying by some questioners who came with prepared texts. Two people actually kind of got booed – two wingnuts and they were the ones pushing the crazy talking points.
I won’t lie – it was really uncomfortable. It felt like reform supporters were outnumbered, though when I looked around only about half of the room would clap for the wingnut talking points. I guess the anti-reformers are louder? As far as calling on questioners – at least one person called Castle out for calling on very few women (though he seemed to be able to select the wingnut women with one exception). He didn’t pick one person of color. The room was also >50% older people who were probably on Medicare. I think Mike Protack actually summed it up best – it was like visiting your in-laws – you hope nothing gets broken and no one gets in a fight (for the record my in-laws are very nice).
Castle seemed to nod along and agree with all the wingnuts but I just got the feeling he just is the “get along.” type. I actually got to talk to him after the townhall. I asked him if he was running for Senate and he looked kind of annoyed, actually. He told me he hadn’t decided. I did get to tell Castle that the bill wasn’t in a hurry, Kennedy had been working on health care for years and he agreed with me. Castle also denied that he was calling on people he knew, despite the fact that one man said he was a big donor, I saw him talking to one woman he called on before the meeting and one man said he had worked with Castle, Reagan and Kemp. Castle’s office also robo-called people about the townhall. Castle himself actually suggested doing a meeting with one side for health care reform supporters and the other half for opponents.
I actually felt kind of sorry for Castle. He seemed like a nice guy and he had to listen to a lot of crazy. However he had the opportunity to correct a lot of misconceptions which he failed to do. I’m proud to say that I informed Castle about the Ezekial Emmanuel talking points and that it was untrue. Castle told me I could make an appointment with his office – right.
There weren’t a lot of people with signs. There was a pro-reform group before the townhall and a few wingnuts with signs after the townhall. There were no Obama is Hitler signs this time.
Pro-reform advocates:
Wingnut sign:
