Why the town hall strategy will fail unless we shape up

As it's the end of the week, perhaps we ought to take a minute to look in the mirror and assess how and what we're doing.

Every day, I read the political blogs and every day, I'm getting more dissolusioned by the disconnect between the triumphalism that accompmanies each town hall news report and the video that accompanies it.  Blame the MSM until the cows come home, but I know what I see, and it doesn't bode well for the country or the conservative movement.

Perhaps my perspective is different because I live in a blue state, but we are forgetting that we are trying to convince people, not belittle or scream at them.  As every Code Pink loonie who has ever snuck into a congressional hearing has shown, chanting is not an effective method of political persuasion, only a way to prove to the chanters themselves that they have Done Something.

We need to keep our eyes on the goal: persuasion.  Not showing our numbers, not thinking up the most clever signs, but persuasion.  The people who support Obamacare are our neighbors, however wrong they may be on this issue.  They jump our cars when our batteries die.  They go to happy hour with us after work.  They are members of our families.  They are not  "sheeple" or "Obamabots."  Throwing around names like those are direct insults to people you know and love, whether you know it or not.

Obamacare supporters are just like you and me, except they have different opinions on issues of public policy.  If you want to make a difference, persuade them.  Here are some keys to persuasion and having a debate with people who are just like you and me and not some formless menacing mass:

- Engagement: Ask them if they have healthcare and if they like the coverage they have (they probably do).  Ask them if their employer would drop coverage if a public plan were to be created.  Ask them about major elective surgeries they've had and find out how long you have to wait for them in Canada.

- "Democrats did it" is not an excuse for any behavior.  Didn't your mom teach you that something isn't right just because someone else did it?

- Tyranny, Communist and Nazi are words that need to be banished from your vocabulary on this issue.  Your friends and neighbors have a picture in their heads about what a tyranny or a communist dictatorship looks like, and it isn't America, with or without socialized medicine.  Trying to convince people that the USA will be a socialist tyranny if the bill passes in its current form will only make you look like a nutjob to the kind of people who aren't immersed in the debate on a daily basis because they aren't tuned into the hyperbole the politically active always toss around.

- Facts and Figures:  Bone up, make a cheat sheet.  Keep it in your wallet. The odds are that whomever you're debating/persuading won't have one.  Advantage, you.

- Know the opposing arguments. Check out Krugman and Ezra Klein.  Try to picture them in a room with you making those arguments and think about how you might respond.  It's hard to be a persuader when the only material you read reinforces what you already believe.  Consider yourself an advocate.

- Keep townhalling.  Be a good example.  Think of someone in your past who changed your mind on a big issue and act like them.

Most of all, realize that our opponents are Americans who want the best for themselves, their families and the country.  To behave otherwise is unfair, self-aggrandizing and accomplishes nothing but raising your blood pressure.