There’s an interesting article here about public reaction in town hall forums with Democrats during the August recess. Obviously, the Democrats can’t admit that their health care ‘reform’ is not only unpopular, but probably a hugely expensive bad idea. The UPenn political scientist that they finally get around to quoting three-quarters of the way through the article makes a particularly good point — Obama has been hugely successful so far in using his most vocal supporters in packing his events to provide a seemingly positive response. The fact that these supporters haven’t been showing up in sufficient numbers to balance the public response in these town hall meetings should be a major worry for the Democrats at this point. Another point that unnamed “communications experts” made in the article — that it’s a bad idea to “demonize the protesters” — goes unexplained. I think I can fill in the blanks, however: if you demonize the people who are angry about this, you’re demonizing the 41% of the public that “Strongly Opposes” the passage of this plan. This is not a good idea politically, not only in the electoral sphere, but because it makes perfectly clear that the Democrats want to force this bill through, regardless of what Republicans want. Their unwillingness to compromise in any way with the Repubublicans in writing the bill already shows this, but this is a far more visual exhibit.