“The “town hells,” in short, don’t represent populism, they’re a display of hysteria fed by lies peddled by GOP leaders and corporate interests. And it’s getting worse.” — Joan Walsh - Salon.com (via think4yourself)
Paul Krugman has a good article about this too.
The problem with the August recess, when members of Congress go home to “hear from the people” – if you take out the political manipulation of who comes to these things – is the same problem as with all user-generated content: the people who show up are self-selected and atypical of the larger public.
I don’t just mean Twitter, blog comments, etc. – which are a lousy, not good, way of finding out what “the people” are thinking. I mean every single venue where people elect to sound off: Letters to the editor. Letters to Congress. People who call in to talk radio shows. People at meetings.
People who show up to a summertime town hall to yell at their representative, when everyone normal is at barbeques or ball games, blissfully unaware of when Congress is out of session, are not representative. Polls and pollsters are attacked in dozens of ways, but seriously: members of Congress should ignore their mail, ignore the e-mail petitions, ignore all the phone calls, disregard the loudmouths at town halls, and just take professional surveys to find out what people are really thinking.
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