"Last night, on February 20, 2025, Republican Congressman Rich McCormick, reelected with 65 percent of the vote three months ago, was startled to be greeted with boos and catcalls at a packed town hall meeting in Roswell, Georgia, by constituents objecting to the government-decimating policies of the Trump-Musk administration."
"Last night, on February 20, 2025, Republican Congressman Rich McCormick, reelected with 65 percent of the vote three months ago, was startled to be greeted with boos and catcalls at a packed town hall meeting in Roswell, Georgia, by constituents objecting to the government-decimating policies of the Trump-Musk administration."
I'm sorry, but if your district gave a Republican 65% of the vote, you are getting exactly what you voted for right now. The GOP has lusted over reducing the federal government for a while now, and that's what you Tea Party jerks have been voting for for 15 years. When it was performative and you didn't have the power to do any of this, this district was surely cheering it on. Now that you're getting what you voted for, you're blaming the guy you elected, at 65%, for doing the sorts of things he said he would do. These people come into these Town Halls sounding so articulate; how can you sound so articulate but act like you didn't know this was what you were voting for? Are Democrats really so bad that they're worse than this? I'm not mad at McCormick; I'm pissed at his constituents.
Are you sure the folks who showed up were the ones that voted for him? Most of the voices I heard on that video didn't seem to have a Georgia accent. Made me wonder.
Hi Don, I’ve been following The Bulwark for a long time but never felt compelled to contribute a comment until now. I am a constituent of Rep. McCormick. I did not vote for him. Lucy McBath (D-Ga) used to be our representative, until she was gerrymandered out of our district. I have no idea how many people at the town hall may have voted for him, but I’d guess it was a pretty small percentage. IOW, you are getting pissed at the resistance. Not useful. You should be cheering them on. And, for what it’s worth, some of us can even be “articulate” occasionally.
This is fair, and I appreciate you showing up. I hope it does some good, and maybe it will. McCormick will have to make the calculation, whether to listen to irate constituents at town halls who may not have voted for him, and possibly lose in 2026 if he gets crosswise with Trump, or to continue to be a Republican in good standing.
We had gerrymandering as well. We were a swing suburban district that an extreme candidate carried just once. Then people living there talked and decided to avoid that next time, so candidates had to be moderate thereafter.
Maybe 12 years ago, our relatively compact district covered fringes of three gerrymandered school districts (We talked at church and in the stores and in the parks, as their service areas were compact ) THEN..., we were chopped up into bits, each bit reassigned to a VERY distant suburb, multiple counties away. For us, our end result was snake like, with a bulge in each tail, our bulge smaller so we'd be dominated by the distant and larger bulge filled with an extreme 10%. The bulge in the other end of the snake outnumbered us, We did not again "have a say so".
CONSEQUENCES--They don't give us town halls. They don't even bother to knock on our door like they used to. The moderate middle has been denied our fair share of reps by gerrymandering?
The big con man says "look at my left hand as I talk about my stolen election" (1% were dead voters on old lists?) . He does NOT say, "ignore the big steal with my right hand" (gerrymanders involve stolen representatives, 10% stolen? more?).
THEY HIDE IT ALL, AS NOT HONEST PEOPLE. You can't easily find a good map of our state's electoral districts online, nor a series showing how they changed over time.
I finally found one recent map. However, it hid the truth, as IT SHADED OUT the urban/suburban metro areas! Who had our bitty-bits at a distance been paired with?
Yeah, in our gerrymandered district there are never any town halls. Our representatives will show up for controlled media events, but never a question and answer session.
I would wager that Rich McCormick will not make that mistake again.
Americans are rotten, lazy and cruel. Not all of us are. Just a healthy 60ish percent of us are. Too lazy to vote, too lazy to care or they want this cruel insanity.
“Don’t give in to the Dark Side”, as Obi Wan counseled Luke Skywalker. After all, it was the evil Emperor who wanted Luke to feel the hate. I try to channel Obi Wan whenever I feel my frustrated rage at t****p starting to boil up. Angering us Libs is just what he wants.
In Heather Cox Richardson’s most recent Letter from an American, she quotes James Marriott of The Times of London:
“ Our society has been peaceful and healthy for so long that for many people serious disaster has become inconceivable,… Americans who parade around in amateur militia groups and brandish Nazi symbols do so partly because they are unable to conceive of what life would actually be like in a fascist state.” Those who attack modern medicine cannot really comprehend a society without it. And, Marriott adds, those who are cheering the rise of autocracy in the United States “have no serious understanding of what it means to live under an autocratic government.”
Those who lack imagination are to be pitied, while acknowledging their lack brings crisis to us all.
Not sure about that number. Most people I have worked with held multiple jobs just to get by. They are too tired and overwhelmed. Many elections only have one candidate to vote for, so even if there are few votes, that candidate wins. I read of a candidate who ran knowing she wouldn’t win, but was in the race so her constituents would see that for once in her community voters have a choice. The DNC should keep her in mind; run a candidate in every election.
We all are too tired and overwhelmed. What we must avoid is making a reason into an excuse. Sometimes in life we simply have to raise our game and redouble our efforts, convenient or not and wanted or not, because the stakes are so high. This is one of those times. Either we care enough to try to save our democracy or we don't. That's the hand that we've been dealt. Nobody who reads the history books later on will care whether we were tired or not when they wonder and ask why the bad guys were able to take over and impose their will. They will see and care about only results. Our collective efforts need to match that and rise to the challenge, without an expiration date or a price tag.
Watching the late night comedy shows with their episodes of street interviews (Jordan Klepper, or “Lie Witness News”) are very demoralizing and evidence of what you write. The stupidity and lack of awareness is so profound, one wonders how they passed a driver’s test, or pay their bills.
Yes, you are right, there are some who are overwhelmed. I just happen to know a lot of lazy, rotten people who either don't vote or vote for cruelty and think it's fun. I live in Oklahoma, so maybe that's why. I wish people would spend a tiny fraction of the time as they do drooling over their screens trying to be better citizens and human beings.
If you want good change, it takes work and sacrifice. And, that's what a Republic requires. It has to be constantly nurtured.
I would like to add there are some states that do not deserve to be in this Union.
So on the mark! Voting for cruelty, & thinking it’s fun! Until the idiot causes THEM pain, like virtually all the farmers in my state. You get outside of either metro area, and it’s all Trumpers who hate the “other”. Bigotry, ignorance, & Fox “News” watchers are the rule. President Musk will eventually hurt all of us.
It's the American evangelical/Dixiecrat way. Always has been. The Southern church enabled slavery, Jim Crow, murder. Now, evangelicals terrorize the most vulnerable amongst us. And, they're stupid enough to think that tithe will wash their evil away.
"Last night, on February 20, 2025, Republican Congressman Rich McCormick, reelected with 65 percent of the vote three months ago, was startled to be greeted with boos and catcalls at a packed town hall meeting in Roswell, Georgia, by constituents objecting to the government-decimating policies of the Trump-Musk administration."
I'm sorry, but if your district gave a Republican 65% of the vote, you are getting exactly what you voted for right now. The GOP has lusted over reducing the federal government for a while now, and that's what you Tea Party jerks have been voting for for 15 years. When it was performative and you didn't have the power to do any of this, this district was surely cheering it on. Now that you're getting what you voted for, you're blaming the guy you elected, at 65%, for doing the sorts of things he said he would do. These people come into these Town Halls sounding so articulate; how can you sound so articulate but act like you didn't know this was what you were voting for? Are Democrats really so bad that they're worse than this? I'm not mad at McCormick; I'm pissed at his constituents.
Are you sure the folks who showed up were the ones that voted for him? Most of the voices I heard on that video didn't seem to have a Georgia accent. Made me wonder.
Hi Don, I’ve been following The Bulwark for a long time but never felt compelled to contribute a comment until now. I am a constituent of Rep. McCormick. I did not vote for him. Lucy McBath (D-Ga) used to be our representative, until she was gerrymandered out of our district. I have no idea how many people at the town hall may have voted for him, but I’d guess it was a pretty small percentage. IOW, you are getting pissed at the resistance. Not useful. You should be cheering them on. And, for what it’s worth, some of us can even be “articulate” occasionally.
This is fair, and I appreciate you showing up. I hope it does some good, and maybe it will. McCormick will have to make the calculation, whether to listen to irate constituents at town halls who may not have voted for him, and possibly lose in 2026 if he gets crosswise with Trump, or to continue to be a Republican in good standing.
Generally, from my experience they hold their town halls in smaller and friendlier towns.
We had gerrymandering as well. We were a swing suburban district that an extreme candidate carried just once. Then people living there talked and decided to avoid that next time, so candidates had to be moderate thereafter.
Maybe 12 years ago, our relatively compact district covered fringes of three gerrymandered school districts (We talked at church and in the stores and in the parks, as their service areas were compact ) THEN..., we were chopped up into bits, each bit reassigned to a VERY distant suburb, multiple counties away. For us, our end result was snake like, with a bulge in each tail, our bulge smaller so we'd be dominated by the distant and larger bulge filled with an extreme 10%. The bulge in the other end of the snake outnumbered us, We did not again "have a say so".
CONSEQUENCES--They don't give us town halls. They don't even bother to knock on our door like they used to. The moderate middle has been denied our fair share of reps by gerrymandering?
The big con man says "look at my left hand as I talk about my stolen election" (1% were dead voters on old lists?) . He does NOT say, "ignore the big steal with my right hand" (gerrymanders involve stolen representatives, 10% stolen? more?).
THEY HIDE IT ALL, AS NOT HONEST PEOPLE. You can't easily find a good map of our state's electoral districts online, nor a series showing how they changed over time.
I finally found one recent map. However, it hid the truth, as IT SHADED OUT the urban/suburban metro areas! Who had our bitty-bits at a distance been paired with?
It's a form of stealing.
Yeah, in our gerrymandered district there are never any town halls. Our representatives will show up for controlled media events, but never a question and answer session.
I would wager that Rich McCormick will not make that mistake again.
In their defense, they clearly believed the leopards would be eating other people's faces.
Yep. And, those people are gross.
Americans are rotten, lazy and cruel. Not all of us are. Just a healthy 60ish percent of us are. Too lazy to vote, too lazy to care or they want this cruel insanity.
“Don’t give in to the Dark Side”, as Obi Wan counseled Luke Skywalker. After all, it was the evil Emperor who wanted Luke to feel the hate. I try to channel Obi Wan whenever I feel my frustrated rage at t****p starting to boil up. Angering us Libs is just what he wants.
In Heather Cox Richardson’s most recent Letter from an American, she quotes James Marriott of The Times of London:
“ Our society has been peaceful and healthy for so long that for many people serious disaster has become inconceivable,… Americans who parade around in amateur militia groups and brandish Nazi symbols do so partly because they are unable to conceive of what life would actually be like in a fascist state.” Those who attack modern medicine cannot really comprehend a society without it. And, Marriott adds, those who are cheering the rise of autocracy in the United States “have no serious understanding of what it means to live under an autocratic government.”
Those who lack imagination are to be pitied, while acknowledging their lack brings crisis to us all.
I want them held accountable for it. They should be.
Not sure about that number. Most people I have worked with held multiple jobs just to get by. They are too tired and overwhelmed. Many elections only have one candidate to vote for, so even if there are few votes, that candidate wins. I read of a candidate who ran knowing she wouldn’t win, but was in the race so her constituents would see that for once in her community voters have a choice. The DNC should keep her in mind; run a candidate in every election.
We all are too tired and overwhelmed. What we must avoid is making a reason into an excuse. Sometimes in life we simply have to raise our game and redouble our efforts, convenient or not and wanted or not, because the stakes are so high. This is one of those times. Either we care enough to try to save our democracy or we don't. That's the hand that we've been dealt. Nobody who reads the history books later on will care whether we were tired or not when they wonder and ask why the bad guys were able to take over and impose their will. They will see and care about only results. Our collective efforts need to match that and rise to the challenge, without an expiration date or a price tag.
And always remember; "We are not the crazy ones".
Watching the late night comedy shows with their episodes of street interviews (Jordan Klepper, or “Lie Witness News”) are very demoralizing and evidence of what you write. The stupidity and lack of awareness is so profound, one wonders how they passed a driver’s test, or pay their bills.
Yes, you are right, there are some who are overwhelmed. I just happen to know a lot of lazy, rotten people who either don't vote or vote for cruelty and think it's fun. I live in Oklahoma, so maybe that's why. I wish people would spend a tiny fraction of the time as they do drooling over their screens trying to be better citizens and human beings.
If you want good change, it takes work and sacrifice. And, that's what a Republic requires. It has to be constantly nurtured.
I would like to add there are some states that do not deserve to be in this Union.
So on the mark! Voting for cruelty, & thinking it’s fun! Until the idiot causes THEM pain, like virtually all the farmers in my state. You get outside of either metro area, and it’s all Trumpers who hate the “other”. Bigotry, ignorance, & Fox “News” watchers are the rule. President Musk will eventually hurt all of us.
Yeah, and then they thump their bibles and lecture us on morality and the American way.
And the haters call themselves “Christian”. Yeah, just like Jesus would do, pile upon the vulnerable, and the least among us. Yeah, that’s Biblical!
It's the American evangelical/Dixiecrat way. Always has been. The Southern church enabled slavery, Jim Crow, murder. Now, evangelicals terrorize the most vulnerable amongst us. And, they're stupid enough to think that tithe will wash their evil away.