Wednesday, August 12, 2009

Standing up to the mob

Matt Yglesias sees Sen. Claire McCaskill keeping her cool under pressure from an angry crowd at a town hall meeting and asks,
Watching McCaskill on TV what I mostly thought of was that I don’t understand why members of congress are holding these town halls. There’s been so much focus on the spectacle of the whole thing that nobody’s really stepped back and explained what the purpose of these events are other than to give us pundits something to chat about.
The answer is that McCaskill and others get great press for facing a mob. Note the lead story in the NYT today:
Senator Goes Face to Face With Dissent
And that's about Specter. This is actually a great opportunity for moderates. Look how sane they appear in comparison to the people showing up at the town halls. The Sunday morning talk show crowd will eat this up.

Jon Bernstein has more.

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