If You're Losing the Support of Hillsboro, then Baby, You're Losing

I said I was going to drag myself to Hillsboro today to Claire McCaskill's town hall, and I did. But oh Lord, we spent three hours sitting high up on bleachers in the college gymnasium. I don't think I've done that since about 1969. It was a LONG three hours.

The gym was filled--I estimate she had about 1500 people attending. Her process for dealing with the crowd and taking questions in such a large venue was poor, but I'm getting to know Claire much better than before, so I was not surprised. She had people write questions which were put into two glass bowls. The questions were then chosen at random. McCaskill then shouted out the name of the person who wrote the question; the person could ask their question (no one could hear when they did--they had no microphones set up for questioners in the gym) or she would read the question. The process was cumbersom and many of the questions were repetitious or, quite frankly, not very good. It would have been much better to let people line up at microphones and take their turn--that process tends to elicit better questions. But I guess Claire was trying to be "fair." Have you ever noticed how "fair" has a way of dumbing things down? I try to be "fair" with my two dogs, but otherwise the concept doesn't interest me much.

The SEIU purple shirt people evidently got the memo this time about not wearing their SEIU shirts to this event. No one showed up in purple shirts (identifying themselves as Chicago union thugs worked out so well for them at Carnahan's event/sarc). What we did see was quite a few of were people with walkers, canes, and power wheelchairs.

Claire came to the podium, accompanied by her 81-year-old mother, to enthusiastic applause and cheers. At that point, I remembered that I was in Hillsboro, MO and not University City, and I thought, this is going to be a very long afternoon. As it turned out, however, the "I'm mad as hell's" outnumbered the Soma-injesting "Obamatrons" about 5 to 1. I heard only one question out of about 30 that was even remotely pro-ObamaCare: "We need this bill sooner than 2013"--which wasn't really a question. One other guy asked if the bill would give him more workman's comp. You mean 89 weeks isn't enough? Other than that, the questions were all anti-ObamaCare. Actually, Claire had a pretty tough day, and I can only imagine the murder she must have felt in her heart for Obama later if she caught any of today's fawning, faux town hall coverage of Barry in New Hampshire. It's good to be King.

More about the questions tomorrow.