Rep. Ted Lieu’s April 24 town hall meeting at the Redondo Beach Performing Arts Center was everything Democratic district town halls should be.
“We are not living in normal times,” said the second term representative for the 33rd Congressional District. “So this won’t be a normal town hall meeting.”
Lieu didn’t even have a chance to speak before a raucous group of Donald Trump supporters, including Latinos for Trump and right-wing gadfly and exhibitionist Arthur Schaper tried drowning out Lieu with shouts of “You Lie!” and “Liar!”
Through quick-witted retorts, Lieu gave out better than what he got from the Trump-supporting hecklers.
“Dude, I make up the rules. You got it?” he said to one heckler.
The boos of the Trump-supporting dissenters were drowned out by standing ovations from the largely Democratic audience.
Like all other Democratic congressional representatives, Lieu spent his spring break away from Washington, D.C., listening to his constituents and revving up Democratic supporters to fight the Trump and Republican agenda.
Some were more successful than others, but Sen. Dianne Feinstein fell in the camp of the least successful. The quarter century congressional veteran found herself getting booed from San Francisco to Los Angeles, staking positions that seemed to the right on questions of whether she supported a single-payer health care system. Though the attacks came from Bernie Sanders supporters in areas where former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton beat Trump by 10 percentage points or more, adopting the language of conservatives opposing the government takeover of health care didn’t earn her any new fans.
Rep. Nanette Barragan, who had already hosted a couple of town hall meetings before coming to San Pedro on April 20, showed flashes of the tenacity she displayed during her race for the Congressional District 44 seat. She did much better by repeatedly highlighting the importance of the progressive, grassroots resistance against Trumpcare, the Republican proposed alternative to Obamacare.
But unlike Lieu’s town hall, there was no pro-Trump contingent serving as reminder of just what was at stake in 2018 congressional elections. The message was clear and decisive. To beat Trump, Democrats must first take back the House of Representatives.
Constituents asked about issues related to environmental justice; Trump’s anti-immigration rhetoric being turned into action; Trump’s saber rattling at North Korea, and dropping bombs in Syria and Afghanistan.
Lieu recalled issuing a public statement after 2016 general election lauding the peaceful transfer of power and his call of giving then President-elect Donald Trump a chance to govern. He said he concluded he was wrong before the month of January ended.
Lieu, who has political action committee known as known as the Leadership, Integrity, Engagement, Unity PAC, which also paid for the Redondo Beach Town Hall meeting, is being used to help finance campaigns other than his own.
Citing the grassroots movement that emerged following the Women’s March after Trump’s inauguration in defeating Trumpcare, Lieu called for the same ground swell of support to help retain Democratic incumbents such as Sacramento Reps. Doris Matsui, Pete Aguilar, Raul Ruiz and Scott Peters.
Then he asked the motivated crowd to help him flip 14 incumbent Republican districts for the 2018 Congressional elections, including several incumbents in California such as Reps. Steve Knight, Mimi Walters, Dana Rohrbacher and Daryl Issa.
He called Trump’s missile strikes on a Syrian air base “unconstitutional” and said the Russian investigation “could lead to high crimes and misdemeanors,” the criteria for impeachment.
“If this continuing resolution has any funding for the stupid border wall idea of Donald Trump, if it has even a penny of funding, I’m not only a no, I’m a hell no!” he exclaimed.
For Democrats dismayed by the Trump administration and their own impotence, town halls like this one are needed to gear up for the fight to take back Congress.