I arrived at Senator Mc Caskill’s town hall about an hour early. Parking was already overflowing down the road, which leads to Lewis and Clark middle school in Jefferson City, Missouri. As I enjoyed the sometimes-steep half-mile walk to the school entrance I began to take note of the license plates of the cars I passed. I saw a few out of state plates more specifically two Illinois, an Oklahoma, a Kansas, one from Delaware of all places and a New York plate. So maybe out of the hundred or so cars I passed by six were certainly from out of state. All six out of state cars sported Obama stickers I might add.
By the time I got in line I figured from a rough guestimate I wasn’t going to get in. Later another gentleman actually went and counted and told me I was number 314 in line. By the time the town hall opened the rumor coming down the line was 340 would be allowed in. The line itself was very well behaved. There were several pro-healthcare people walking up and down the line giving out stickers and a lot of people in line with machine printed pro healthcare signs. My estimate was about 60% protestors to 40% supporters of healthcare from what I could see from my vantagepoint. At the time they started letting people in I was at about the center of people waiting, so I would say at least 300 people were not allowed inside for the town hall.
As a side note here, I noticed something that I had already expected would happen while waiting in line. I purposefully went in very casual attire and had no outward signs of support or protest on me. I was simply wearing a T-shirt with the word ARMY across the chest and a pair of shorts. I had the good fortune to be standing in line with a rather short black woman who had immigrated from Nigeria several years ago. This woman was not a health care supporter nor was she in fact a protester yet as each astro-turf supporter came down the line giving out small signs or stickers they pointedly avoided any contact with me but tried to give my line neighbor a sticker or sign automatically. Stereotyping is ok for community organizers I guess.
Once we all got inside the senator was late but the town hall did finally get started. The time for this town hall had been changed at least three times in as many days and another interesting thing I had noticed when signing up for it that the confirmation also told me I had signed up for the Warrensburg town hall not the Jefferson City one. Ok mistakes can be made I guess.
There was only the microphone on the podium for the Senator and those in attendance were required to fill out question forms to be read.
The first question was one asking the Senator if she would vote for the bill if it were brought to the floor under reconciliation? Her answer or lack thereof, set the tone for the entire town hall. She hemmed and hawed and said something about it depended on what was in the bill and then tried to move on. She was immediately confronted by shouts of "Answer the question". A short argument began with the audience and McCaskill tried to defend her round about answer which was this time met with a loud round of "NO you didn’t".
The mood inside the town hall was clearly at least 80% anti-healthcare. Senator McCaskill never really answered a question but gave standard Obamacare canned answers. She attacked the death panel question with the same old not in the bill rhetoric, like anyone thinks the panel is outlined in the bill. Someone near me shouted that it wasn’t about a panel as much as it was about the shortage of care that could be provided. The Senator ignored that shout.
At one point Senator McCaskill said if we the people of Missouri didn’t agree with the way she represented us we could vote her out of office. There was a standing ovation and about 5 full minutes of cheering then.
At the end of this bogus town hall with written questions, no microphone for the audience and no real debate or follow up to McCaskill’s run-around answers the Senator said the one thing that rang true the whole hour.
She said she was doing these difficult town halls because she worked for the people of Missouri and that she didn’t feel anyone in the room had voted for her nor ever would vote for her anyway, so there really was no reason for her to have come.
There was more cheering and standing and clapping with her last statement as people started to exit the building.
Outside a few protesters and supporters of Obamacare had waited and seemed to be lined up on separate sides of the walkway with signs and some cheering back and forth. I waited around for a bit but didn’t see anything developing of any interest and then finally left.
All in all I would have to say this was not a good town hall for Senator McCaskill. Just my gut feeling from her arrogant attitude and lack of any real debate or follow-up questions is, she is going to vote her way no matter how much her constituents protest. With her loose promise of supporting the second amendment and then voting differently it doesn’t surprise me in the least.
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