Where are the liberal town hall outbursts?

Dave Weigel in an article on Slate.com, wrote this column chastising Democrats for not being able to scrounge enough "grassroots" outrage to Rep. Paul Ryan's budget plan, like the summer town halls where the newly emerging tea party folks screamed and hollered about the injustice of President Obama's healthcare plan, which failed on a policy level but won on a political level as it energized Republican voters for 2010. (I'm sorry tea partiers are comprised of a WIDE cross-section of American political tradition.)



Now, I hate to slam a fellow NU wildcat, but the reason that there are no liberal town hall outbursts is because liberals actually believe in compromise. And although we're willing to call Republicans out on the things we disagree with, we at least let the debate happen. See below for how "angry" liberals face off with their Representative Ryan below:



There you have it. Sighs of "ah...come on Paul" and boos that calm down within 2 or 3 seconds.

This is both the Democratic Party's biggest strength and biggest weakness. It's the "I see your point" quality that most Democrats have. Politically it doesn't make for the strongest case and Republicans use this weakness to play to win as the healthcare debate showed where conservative ideas to reduce costs (such as online exchanges, individual mandates, and living will planning) were all reduced to "death panels" and "government takeover".