Allen Boyd on those opposing the health care bill: They may be in a minority…
Don’t like the government’s health care plan?
Your Florida District 2 Congressman, Allen Boyd, thinks you are in the minority.
From The Politico, 8-22-09:
MARIANNA, Fla. — Rep Allen Boyd (D-Fla.) is a skilled politician who has pretty much seen it all — a Deep South Democrat who’s managed to dispatch all opponents in his conservative-leaning Panhandle district since winning election in 1996.
But as he fended off gnats buzzing through the August humidity after a morning fending off angry constituents at a town hall meeting here, Boyd confided that the depth of the unease spurred by the health care debate had caught him by surprise.
“They may be in a minority, but they are a larger minority than we’ve seen in the 20-plus years that I’ve been doing this,” said Boyd of the standing-room-only crowds who have been showing up to shout, boo, mutter and, in one case, hand him an actual stack of pink slips since he returned home for recess. “I’ve never seen anything like this.”
The overhyped and in many cases fraudulent sense of grass-roots fervor during an August Democrats would like to forget is easy to minimize. But for all the cries of Astroturf fakery and ginned-up crowds, a ground zero view in a district like Boyd’s underlines that a very real sense of anger and frustration is bubbling over as summer wanes.
(story concludes online at above link)
RPS Commentary:
I do not want a "skilled politician". What I want is a representative that will listen to us and vote accordingly. Mr. Boyd did not listen to us on the Stimulus Spending Bill (H.R.1 final vote) or Cap & Trade (H.R. 2454). I doubt he heard us on Health Care, but the citizen participation here has been so great that his leadership may well have let him off the hook on it to appease us after determining she had enough votes without him.
A Gallup Poll in October showed only 25% of voters supported the bill, while 33% opposed it, with 39% undecided due to uncertainty about the contents and 3% with no opinion.
Mr. Boyd, if we are a minority, how about releasing some statistics as to how many actual voters (you know, the people that email you through your website that requires all sorts of personal information or people that can be otherwise verified) support or oppose this bill? In addition to the above Gallup Poll, A recent FAMU survey said only 36% here support it. Math is tough, but 100%-36%=64%. 36 is less than 64, so I think in fact the minority are voters that support it here.
Normally, I’m not awfully fond of politics in general – however, now and then all of us have to pay attention. There are a few very good points made here, and I’m thinking about it deeply – thank you.