Month: January 2017

Of Kings and Presidents
by Batocchio

Recently, civil rights icon John Lewis criticized Donald Trump, saying he wouldn’t be a “legitimate president,” and Trump, true to form, issued a factually challenged attack on Lewis for being “All talk, talk, talk – no action.” For added irony, this occurred just before Martin Luther King Jr. Day, and Lewis of course actually marched with King and was severely beaten in the course of fighting for voting rights. Meanwhile, Trump was elected in the first presidential election after John Roberts and other conservatives on the Supreme Court gutted the Voting Rights Act of 1965 that Lewis helped secure. Voting rights continue to be under attack and there’s plenty of bad faith evident from conservatives and Republicans on the subject. Given MLK Day and Trump’s looming inauguration, I found myself pondering these issues and some words by King.

“True peace is not merely the absence of tension, it is the presence of justice.” (1955)

“No justice, no peace” is the rally version of this one. I’ve seen many pieces, often with a scolding tone, arguing how everyone who didn’t vote for Trump should try to understand and sympathize with Trump voters, who are typified as white, working class and economically anxious (the working class part isn’t entirely true). I’ve seen much less discussion of the economic anxieties of folks who aren’t white and why their concerns matter less, or conversations about Trump’s horribly plutocratic policies, a standard conservative/Republican approach that will not help anyone but the rich. (Republicans keep invoking the middle class and running against the predictable consequences of their own economic policies and then offer as their solution more extreme versions of the same.) Nor have I seen anyone who’s complained about how mean liberals are to conservatives address the issue of Trump proposing to discriminate against Muslims (which was a planned statement, not one of his many crazy, off-the-cuff remarks). That wasn’t a deal-breaker for Trump voters, and I’ve yet to hear from those complaining about social discomfort whether they approve of the loss of actual rights for a minority group or just don’t consider it that big an issue. (The two concerns aren’t equivalent.) We’re not hearing honest and in-depth discussion of any of this stuff, and that prevents any kind of meaningful reconciliation. True peace can’t be achieved through capitulating on essential rights or accepting a rigged system of justice and prosperity.

“The time is always right to do something right.” (1964)

This one serves as a gut-check. It’s not always hard to tell right from wrong; the kicker is whether we’re willing to deal with the hassle. King championed some causes that were unpopular in his time and many still are – voting rights, racial equality, aid for the poor and opposition to war, to name a few. Activism isn’t easy or quick or glamourous, nor is there any guarantee of success. All that work may never pay off in the material world, at least not in one’s lifetime. And sometimes even when that work succeeds, it may be undone later and the same struggle will need to be refought.

“If I cannot do great things, I can do small things in a great way.” (Often attributed to King, although I haven’t been able to verify a source.)

It’s easy to look at the current political climate and the year to come with dread, or feel overwhelmed by all the battles to come. It’s easy to get burnt out as an activist. I like this line because it makes those challenges a bit more manageable. No one has the energy to fight every struggle. Realistically, with all three branches of government in Republican control, the destructive ideology of movement conservatism and the level of conscience demonstrated by elected officials and political operatives, plenty of good policies are likely to be shredded and many bad measures will be enacted. It may be possible to block some of them. But it’ll be important to call out wrongdoing, go on record and bring that up in future battles, especially elections. And although it may be possible to win over some of the people who voted for Obama and then Trump, it would be wise to register many new voters, motivate registered nonvoters and fight to make sure that more people who want to vote actually can do so. The long game for a healthy democracy depends a great deal on small things.

Trump press ban.
Not that there’s anything wrong with that.
by Tom Sullivan

The Trump threat to evict the press corp from the White House might actually do reporters some good, writes Hullabaloo alum David Atkins at Washington Monthly. Putting to bed the “dreary spectacle” of press room briefings where reporters compete in a high school-ish competition to be called on is overdue:

The Trump Administration will be actively hostile to the press, and the press should see itself as hostile in return. Journalists from major media organizations would likely do better reporting separated from the high-school-cafeteria environment of the briefing room, and would be better advised to seek out leaks from disgruntled Republicans than from cozy access granted by being a good “team player.”

At Politico, Jack Shafer believes Trump is making America great again by giving the press no reason to kiss up to the White House in the name of “access.” Trump’s inauguration marks an end to the “transactional relationship between sources and journalists.” It is Liberation Day:

Opportunities to ignore the White House minders and investigate Trump announce themselves almost daily. For instance, the load-bearing walls of the Office of Government Ethics are groaning with the weight of filings by his appointees, as the New York Times reported earlier this month. Trump has installed the “wealthiest cabinet in modern American history,” the Times says. Its website has already crashed from public queries and the OGE director has denounced the Trump plan to avoid conflict of interest as “wholly inadequate.” Reporters will be mining these forms for months and producing damaging results without any Trump administration confirmation or cooperation.

As Trump shuts down White House access to reporters, they will infest the departments and agencies around town that the president has peeved. The intelligence establishment, which Trump has deprecated over the issue of Russian hacking, owes him no favors and less respect. It will be in their institutional interest to leak damaging material on Trump. The same applies to other bureaucracies. Will a life-long EPA employ take retirement knowing he won’t be replaced, or if he is, by somebody who will take policy in a direction he deplores? Such an employee could be a fine source. Trump, remember, will only be president, not emperor, and as such subject to all the passive-aggressive magic a bureaucracy can produce. Ditto the Pentagon, the State Department, the FBI, and even conventionally newsless outposts like Transportation and Labor.

Trump the Incurious, the president-elect with no clue who John Lewis is, probably thinks Deep Throat means something entirely different from what it once meant in Washington. If the post-Watergate press unlearns its stenography, Trump may actually learn something as president. Like eating his strained spinach like a good boy, he won’t like it.

Josh Marshall thinks Trump’s attempts to bully the press are “no different from the dominance politics he played on his opponents in the GOP primaries.” Bark loudly in the other dog’s face until he submissively rolls over onto his back and pees in the air. It’s the same game the right used to “work the refs” in the press for so long. Trump is just better at it.

Shafer quotes Newt Gingrich from an appearance on Sean Hannity’s show. He lays out Trump’s game plan:

Trump and his team “need to go out there and understand they have it in their power to set the terms of this dialogue,” Gingrich said on the Jan. 11 episode.

A Russian journalist Marshall cites congratulates the American press on being screwed:

This man owns you. He understands perfectly well that he is the news. You can’t ignore him. You’re always playing by his rules — which he can change at any time without any notice. You can’t — in Putin’s case — campaign to vote him out of office. Your readership is dwindling because ad budgets are shrinking — while his ratings are soaring, and if you want to keep your publication afloat, you’ll have to report on everything that man says as soon as he says it, without any analysis or fact-checking, because 1) his fans will not care if he lies to their faces; 2) while you’re busy picking his lies apart, he’ll spit out another mountain of bullshit and you’ll be buried under it.

But like Shafer, Marshall sees the dynamic in different terms:

Trump wants to bully the press and profit off the presidency. He’s told us this clearly in his own words. We need to accept the reality of both. The press should cover him on that basis, as a coward and a crook. The big corporate media organizations may not be able to use those words, I understand, but they should employ that prism. The truth is that his threats against the press to date are ones it is best to laugh at. If Trump should take some un- or extra-constitutional actions, we will deal with that when it happens. I doubt he will or can. But I won’t obsess about it in advance. Journalists should be unbowed and aggressive and with a sense of humor until something happens to prevent them from doing so. Trump is a punk and a bully. People who don’t surrender up their dignity to him unhinge him.

Unhinge away.

Trump the Message Undisciplined no doubt thinks press coverage works the way Todd Akin’s “legitimate rape” does. That in the event of negative stories his presidency has magic ways “to try to shut the whole thing down.” Good luck with that. It didn’t stop Deep Throat and print-only newspapers. It’s not likely to in the age of the Internet and social media. But first the press needs to unlearn how to sit and roll over.

Team sports

by digby

Basically these polling results about Trump’s ethical quagmire are depressing. . Reality doesn’t matter:

Americans divide evenly on whether the incoming Trump administration is complying with ethics laws. And while a bare majority in a new ABC News/Washington Post poll accepts President-elect Donald Trump’s business ownership plan, three-quarters say he should release his tax returns.

Contrary to his comment that the American public doesn’t care about the issue, four in 10 of those polled say they care “a lot” about Trump releasing his tax records.

See PDF with full results and charts here.

This report is a first look at results of an extensive ABC/Post pre-inaugural poll, produced for ABC by Langer Research Associates. Results on Trump’s handling of the transition, views on his policy proposals and expectations for his presidency will be released Tuesday morning, with results Wednesday morning on President Barack Obama’s final ratings as president.

In terms of ethics, the poll finds Americans are split on whether or not Trump, his family and his advisers are complying with federal ethics laws: Forty-three percent think so, while 44 percent think not.

Partisan and ideological gaps are wide: Seventy-nine percent of Republicans say Trump is complying with ethics laws, dropping to 44 percent among independents and just 16 percent of Democrats. Similarly, it’s 72 percent among strong conservatives, slipping to 56 percent among “somewhat” conservative Americans, then plummeting to 37 percent of moderates and 25 percent of liberals.

These divisions also are evident in another measure: Among Americans who say they wanted Trump to win the presidency — 36 percent of the public — a broad 85 percent think he’s in compliance ethically. That drops to just 11 percent of those who wanted Hillary Clinton to win (39 percent of all adults) and a third of those who preferred other candidates, or none of them.

Despite criticism by some ethics officials, 52 percent overall say Trump’s plan to continue owning his businesses while placing them in a trust managed by his sons is sufficient. Forty-two percent instead say he should sell his businesses, peaking at 71 percent of Clinton supporters, vs. just 10 percent of those who favored Trump for the office.

Over half the country thinks it’s just fine if Trump runs his business out of the white house and basically sells the presidential seal as his “brand.”

And when I think about the fits they threw over Al Gore doing a fundraiser at a Buddhist temple or the horror of Clinton losing money on a land deal years before he even ran for president it gives me a headache.

They do want him to show his tax returns. But obviously, if he does it half the country will say it’s all good and that will be that.

He can do what he wants for the time being and his people will march behind him into hell. I don’t know what it will take to get them to change course.

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What are these “exports” you speak of?

by digby

For an allegedly sophisticated businessman, Trump doesn’t seem to understand how any of this works:

In an interview with German news magazine Bild published this weekend, Trump said that BMW should reconsider plans to build a $1 billion plant in San Luis Potosí, Mexico. The automaker plans to begin building the BMW 3 Series sedan there in 2019.
[…]
BMW says that it will sell the cars it makes in Mexico all over the world, including in the United States, regardless of Trump’s plan to impose a tarriff on any Mexican-built car that come into the U.S.

The new Mexican plant is meant to be a boost to the Series 3 production that’s already underway in Germany and China — BMW isn’t relocating any jobs to Mexico.

BMW’s largest plant in the world is in Spartanburg, S.C., that employs 8,800 workers. The facility assembled more than 400,000 X model crossover vehicles last year, 70% of which were shipped to other countries. In fact, BMW is the largest U.S. exporter of cars.

“The BMW Group is at home in the USA,” said the company’s statement.

BMW builds far more cars at its U.S. plant than it sells here. In 2016 it sold 288,000 in the U.S.

It’s a multi-national company that both exports and imports cars, some of which are manufactured here and some of which are not. I know that’s complicated for Trump and his voters to understand but if he wants to insure that Americans have high paying manufacturing jobs he might want to take exports into consideration before he spouts off like a fool on these subjects.

But hey, Trump’s gonna Trump and apparently there’s nothing anyone can do about it.

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A patriotic sentiment

by digby

Shepard Fairey’s Trump Inaugural artwork:

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Voices from Trumpland

by digby

He sounds like a common Trump voter to me:

Warren Mayor Jim Fouts used the n-word, compared black people to “chimps” and called old women “dried-up cunts” in new audio recordings obtained exclusively by Motor City Muckraker.

Fouts, who is holding a Martin Luther King Jr. celebration in Warren this afternoon, didn’t respond to our questions for comment.

In previous recordings, Fouts made crude statements about disabled people, prompting calls for his resignation. He also was fired from his weekly radio show on 910AM Radio Superstation.

Fouts has denied making the statements, saying the recordings were engineered to sound like him. But audio experts disagree.

In the latest batch of recordings, Fouts compared black people to chimpanzees.

“Blacks do look like chimpanzees,” Fouts said. “I was watching this black woman with her daughter and they looked like two chimps.”

“Think I want to date a fucking 60-year-old hag?” Fouts said. “Fuck that shit. I’m not interested in any old ugly hag. I think after a certain age they are dried up, washed up burned out.”

In another recording, Fouts makes more vile statements about women.

“They are pussies when they are young, and when they get older, they’re just mean, hateful dried-up cunts.”

Residents have called for Mayor Fouts to resign after he said disabled people “aren’t even human beings.” He suggested the media had “a pretty brutal negative agenda” against him.

This talk is not uncommon among Trump voters — and Republican officials:

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“… a profound recognition that nonviolence is the answer to the crucial political and moral question of our time”

by digby

Dr. Martin Luther King’s Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech:

Your Majesty, Your Royal Highness, Mr. President, Excellencies, Ladies and Gentlemen:

I accept the Nobel Prize for Peace at a moment when 22 million Negroes of the United States of America are engaged in a creative battle to end the long night of racial injustice. I accept this award on behalf of a civil rights movement which is moving with determination and a majestic scorn for risk and danger to establish a reign of freedom and a rule of justice. I am mindful that only yesterday in Birmingham, Alabama, our children, crying out for brotherhood, were answered with fire hoses, snarling dogs and even death. I am mindful that only yesterday in Philadelphia, Mississippi, young people seeking to secure the right to vote were brutalized and murdered. And only yesterday more than 40 houses of worship in the State of Mississippi alone were bombed or burned because they offered a sanctuary to those who would not accept segregation. I am mindful that debilitating and grinding poverty afflicts my people and chains them to the lowest rung of the economic ladder.

Therefore, I must ask why this prize is awarded to a movement which is beleaguered and committed to unrelenting struggle; to a movement which has not won the very peace and brotherhood which is the essence of the Nobel Prize.

After contemplation, I conclude that this award which I receive on behalf of that movement is a profound recognition that nonviolence is the answer to the crucial political and moral question of our time – the need for man to overcome oppression and violence without resorting to violence and oppression. Civilization and violence are antithetical concepts. Negroes of the United States, following the people of India, have demonstrated that nonviolence is not sterile passivity, but a powerful moral force which makes for social transformation. Sooner or later all the people of the world will have to discover a way to live together in peace, and thereby transform this pending cosmic elegy into a creative psalm of brotherhood. If this is to be achieved, man must evolve for all human conflict a method which rejects revenge, aggression and retaliation. The foundation of such a method is love.

The tortuous road which has led from Montgomery, Alabama to Oslo bears witness to this truth. This is a road over which millions of Negroes are travelling to find a new sense of dignity. This same road has opened for all Americans a new era of progress and hope. It has led to a new Civil Rights Bill, and it will, I am convinced, be widened and lengthened into a super highway of justice as Negro and white men in increasing numbers create alliances to overcome their common problems.

I accept this award today with an abiding faith in America and an audacious faith in the future of mankind. I refuse to accept despair as the final response to the ambiguities of history. I refuse to accept the idea that the “isness” of man’s present nature makes him morally incapable of reaching up for the eternal “oughtness” that forever confronts him. I refuse to accept the idea that man is mere flotsom and jetsom in the river of life, unable to influence the unfolding events which surround him. I refuse to accept the view that mankind is so tragically bound to the starless midnight of racism and war that the bright daybreak of peace and brotherhood can never become a reality.

I refuse to accept the cynical notion that nation after nation must spiral down a militaristic stairway into the hell of thermonuclear destruction. I believe that unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final word in reality. This is why right temporarily defeated is stronger than evil triumphant. I believe that even amid today’s mortar bursts and whining bullets, there is still hope for a brighter tomorrow. I believe that wounded justice, lying prostrate on the blood-flowing streets of our nations, can be lifted from this dust of shame to reign supreme among the children of men. I have the audacity to believe that peoples everywhere can have three meals a day for their bodies, education and culture for their minds, and dignity, equality and freedom for their spirits. I believe that what self-centered men have torn down men other-centered can build up. I still believe that one day mankind will bow before the altars of God and be crowned triumphant over war and bloodshed, and nonviolent redemptive good will proclaim the rule of the land. “And the lion and the lamb shall lie down together and every man shall sit under his own vine and fig tree and none shall be afraid.” I still believe that We Shall overcome!

This faith can give us courage to face the uncertainties of the future. It will give our tired feet new strength as we continue our forward stride toward the city of freedom. When our days become dreary with low-hovering clouds and our nights become darker than a thousand midnights, we will know that we are living in the creative turmoil of a genuine civilization struggling to be born.

Today I come to Oslo as a trustee, inspired and with renewed dedication to humanity. I accept this prize on behalf of all men who love peace and brotherhood. I say I come as a trustee, for in the depths of my heart I am aware that this prize is much more than an honor to me personally.

Every time I take a flight, I am always mindful of the many people who make a successful journey possible – the known pilots and the unknown ground crew.

So you honor the dedicated pilots of our struggle who have sat at the controls as the freedom movement soared into orbit. You honor, once again, Chief Lutuli of South Africa, whose struggles with and for his people, are still met with the most brutal expression of man’s inhumanity to man. You honor the ground crew without whose labor and sacrifices the jet flights to freedom could never have left the earth. Most of these people will never make the headline and their names will not appear in Who’s Who. Yet when years have rolled past and when the blazing light of truth is focused on this marvellous age in which we live – men and women will know and children will be taught that we have a finer land, a better people, a more noble civilization – because these humble children of God were willing to suffer for righteousness’ sake.

I think Alfred Nobel would know what I mean when I say that I accept this award in the spirit of a curator of some precious heirloom which he holds in trust for its true owners – all those to whom beauty is truth and truth beauty – and in whose eyes the beauty of genuine brotherhood and peace is more precious than diamonds or silver or gold.

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Looking for a fight


by digby

The man who will be president next week at this time suggested that the head of the CIA leaked fake news about him on twitter yesterday:

The common factors in the authoritarian populist wave

by digby

Good morning.  Here’s a little bit of crystal ball gazing to start your day:

This column is about what life will be like under Trump, based on discernible patterns in other countries where populists gained power, especially those with possible murky Russian ties. I write this not as the kind of airy opiner now ubiquitous via the internet – just one more shrill partisan voice in the noise – but as a professional with specific two-decades-long experience in the subject. Experience on the ground that is, as a reporter and commentator. I have now covered upwards of a dozen countries that have buckled under the emergent wave of populist leaders, from the Far East to the Mideast to Europe and the Americas. Many of the countries have done so quite democratically, at first. That emergent wave has crashed onto US shores in a fashion thoroughly precedented abroad.

Recently, I wrote about how I’d seen all the tricks in the Trump campaign before, actually in Tbilisi, Georgia, during the 2012 national elections when the pro-US candidate lost to a pro-Russian populist. At that time, no one was ready to believe the Russians capable of influencing Western style elections. Many still don’t, even after Trump. We now have enough experience of populists in power in the West and elsewhere to guess intelligently at what’s to come in the US; what life will feel like under Trump. Here is a checklist to compare against in the coming months and years. We will all be happier if none of this comes to pass but the weight of evidence suggests the worst. Equally, none of this implies that supporters of Trump don’t have legitimate issues on their side which, sadly, other politicians won’t address. Which is how populists come to power.

Constitutional Chaos

Already the intelligence services and Mr.Trump have squared off. Think about that for a long moment. Then think about what Trump will do. He will appoint new chiefs. They will fight with their rank and file. He will try to downsize and defund. There will be pushback. Imagine what that will look like in the media. Then there’s the ‘Emoluments Clause’ that, according to various experts, requires Trump resign from his businesses. He won’t fully. His kids certainly wont. His kids will also occupy indefinable White House positions with disproportionate power, raising all manner of nepotism questions. For a long while, Trump will ignore his more-or-less respectable cabinet chiefs and get things done via non-accredited unofficial advisors. Picking through the legal minefield, the courts and ultimately the Supreme Court will be very busy. So, think about vacancies on the Supreme Court. Watch Republicans in Congress divide endlessly over the issues. There will be incessant all-against-all confusion in America’s institutions – as there was in the very process of the election. All this chaos – cui bono? Confusion and uncertainty creates a yearning for strongman rule.

Democratic Institutions Will Save US

Here is a scary cri de ceour from a Hungarian intellectual with several years of living under populist rule. Published in the Washington Post, the op-ed warns us against putting faith in the rectifying force of statutes or institutions “Do not be distracted by a delusion of impending normalization. Do not ascribe a rectifying force to statutes, logic, necessities or fiascoes. Remember the frequently reset and always failed illusions attached to an eventual normalization of Vladimir Putin, Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Orban.” In short, no ‘normalization’ happens under the corrective effect of institutions. Rather, institutions themselves get eroded.

Everything Is Equal And Opposite

At first it was Trump forecasting doubts on electoral fairness. After the election, it was Hillary’s side. First the FBI seemed to take Trump’s side. Then the CIA took the opposite side. Rightwingers went with Putin over their own national security agencies. Prog types unprecedentedly sided with national security. Suddenly Up is down, down is up. Everything can become its reverse, moral equivalency will reign. Trump’s conflicts of interest? Answer: What about the Clinton Foundation. Trump’s (and Kissinger’s) connections to Russia? Answer: What about the Clinton Foundation. Kremlinologists of recent years call this ‘whataboutism’ because the Kremlin’s various mouthpieces deployed the technique so exhaustively against the US. So Putin commits Georgia, Crimea, Donbass, MH17, Olympic doping, poisoning and killing of opponents, Assad, Allepo etc.? Answer: What about Iraq and Libya.

The suspicious similarity between Kremlin propaganda and Trump propaganda surely cannot mean that the Kremlin influences the Trump campaign? Surely not. Preposterous notion. But just in case the patterns don’t go away, remember: the Kremlin’s goal is not merely to create national bifurcation. The goal is to create confusion of allegiance, of trust, of truth, loss of faith in the open society, in the very epistemology of empirical fact. You’d think such a quasi-metaphysical inversion of all certainty couldn’t be deliberately achieved. You’d have to be paranoid to believe that.

I doubt things will unfold exactly they way it unfolded in other places. And Trump is very, very dumb so who knows how that would impact any scenario. But it’s probably a good idea to take into account other peoples’ experiences and perceptions of similar events.

On the other hand, the loss of trust, of faith in institutions and the epistomology of empirical fact started in this country before the Trump campaign. The American right has been on board with that for a while. Recall:

The aide said that guys like me were “in what we call the reality-based community,” which he defined as people who “believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality.” … “That’s not the way the world really works anymore,” he continued. “We’re an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you’re studying that reality—judiciously, as you will—we’ll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that’s how things will sort out. We’re history’s actors…and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.”

*BTW: As I’ve written numerous times, it is not unprecedented for the left to be credulous of IC analyses (as opposed to covert activity) and the right to be skeptical of CIA analyses going back to the 1950s. Neither is it unprecedented for the right to be supportive of the FBI or the FBI to be supportive of the right. That part of this story isn’t as surprising as the rest of it.

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Dying for someone else’s political faith
by Tom Sullivan

Last week, Republicans in Congress began the process of repealing the Affordable Care Act with no replacement in sight. Inside the Beltway, they are about to find out what wrath means.

In Maury County, Tennessee, Dee Dee Ward doesn’t know how she’ll pay for chemotherapy if the Affordable Care Act is repealed. “What do you do? Do you say, ‘I can’t afford it. I have no money’? And you just stay home and wait to die?” (Click through tweet for the video):

A woman in Trump country Tennessee pleading with GOP Congress to not take away Ocare covering her chemo via @kasie https://t.co/Bpm8brR5LY pic.twitter.com/5t8og0lucN— Sam Stein (@samsteinhp) January 14, 2017

Sixty-eight percent of voters in Maury County voted for Donald Trump, NBC News reports.

Dee Dee Ward’s situation got me asking, @DesJarlaisTN04 @MarshaBlackburn @SenAlexander @SenBobCorker , how many Tennesseans volunteered to give their lives for your political faith?

Rep. Diana DeGette is a Democrat representing the 1st district of Colorado. She met with her voters at a large town hall event over the weekend.

Packing them into @RepDianaDeGette's town hall. Americans are not cool with this. #TheResistance is going to be LEGENDARY. #StandIndivisible pic.twitter.com/vHslxMYatn— #FXNGCPTLSM (@brianprogrammer) January 15, 2017

The rally OUTSIDE the rally hosted by @RepDianaDeGette. She's fighting hard for us. #StandIndivisible pic.twitter.com/YwSizOwzDK— #FXNGCPTLSM (@brianprogrammer) January 15, 2017

DeGette’s Republican colleague from Colorado’s 6th congressional district ran out early when 150 constituents showed up for his event Saturday at a public library in Aurora:

Crowd starts singing while trying to get in to see Congressman Mike Coffman in Aurora. He only agreed with people a couple at a time. #9News pic.twitter.com/bqZgj4FF6f— Nelson Garcia (@9NewsEducation) January 14, 2017

About 70 people got in to see Congressman Mike Coffman, according to 9News Denver. Police erected yellow crime scene tape around the rear door to help Coffman escape uncontaminated by contact with common constituents. Click here for video.

While more than 100 people were waiting to meet with him, Mike Coffman sneaks out early from his own community event. #9News pic.twitter.com/NAZlXTKgQm— Nelson Garcia (@9NewsEducation) January 14, 2017

This is going to get real. Bernie Sanders’ Our Revolution organizers held Save Health Care rallies across the country Sunday.

10,000 patriots showed up in Michigan today to save the healthcare of millions of Americans.#OurFirstStand #SaveACA pic.twitter.com/oojfibjoeA— Parker 🏳️‍🌈 (@Parker9_) January 15, 2017

Line down the block and around the corner to get into today's #SaveHealthcare rally in Indianapolis. pic.twitter.com/NIAxMw4gWy— John Lacny (@JohnLacny) January 15, 2017

Wall to wall capacity at the #SaveACA event in Raleigh. pic.twitter.com/x2a7RFk3HB— Asinus Pervicax (@Cato_of_Utica) January 15, 2017

Huge turnout in SF for #OurFirstStand – proud to stand with nearly 3,000 today to #SaveHealthCare. pic.twitter.com/5XGYJNQqsj— Keith for DNC (@EllisonCampaign) January 16, 2017

Today in Portland thousands gathered to #SaveHealthCare. We will NEVER give up fighting for a health care system that works for EVERYONE. pic.twitter.com/BiCeNGZrDS— Earl Blumenauer (@repblumenauer) January 15, 2017

#SaveHealthCare rally turns out hundreds of #TampaBay neighbors! Message: Don't #MakeAmericaSickAgain! Thx @Timintampa #OurFirstStand 🇺🇸 pic.twitter.com/BdGcc5RoZZ— US Rep Kathy Castor (@USRepKCastor) January 15, 2017

Even in our little burgh, a couple of hundred turned out to hear from state Senator Terry Van Duyn, a former ACA Navigator @TerryVanDuynNC :

I think we can expect fewer town halls from the GOP priesthood in the near future. They won’t stand for hearing heresy uttered by constituents. They’ll simply hide and stop their ears.