Shutting Down Town Hall

Here's one way to avoid angry town hall meetings if you're a Democratic congressman: Don't hold them.

Only a third of Democratic representatives and fewer than a third of senators are holding health reform meetings with their constituents during the August recess, Politico reports.

Some Democrats are holding small group meetings, "telephone town halls" or participating in radio talk show Q&As instead. So much for the democratic process.

The town halls have come to symbolize the problems President Obama and the Democrats are having selling their health care reform to the American public. Scenes of angry voters confronting politicians are contributing to cynicism over the Obama plan, polls show. One video of Rep. Barney Frank confronting a woman at a town hall (she equates health care reform to Nazism) has been viewed more than 1 million times on YouTube.

Democrats know that they have to change public opinion if they're going to succeed in passing the president's $1 trillion reform plan. In a separate story, Politico reports that the Democratic National Committee is helping to organize more than 500 pro-reform events with grassroots groups between now and Sept. 8, the date lawmakers return to Washington.