El Marco was at the Stout Street Clinic in downtown Denver where Nancy Pelosi was supposed to come to bolster the pro-reform troops with her presence yesterday. Not long before Pelosi had gone on-record saying that the anti-legislation crowds that have been reprimanding Congress were anti-American bullies:
‘I think they’re AstroTurf. You be the judge. They’re carrying swastikas and symbols like that to a town meeting on health care.’
What did she see upon her arrival? Dozens of average American citizens dressed in short and jeans, protesting the Democrats’ plans with home-made signs that made their sentiments perfectly clear.
There were no 3-piece suits in the crowd and no particular point of organization for the protest, contrary to what Senator Barbara Boxer (D-CA) and other Democrats have stridently and repeatedly claimed.
Indeed, it seems that the only thing that brought these people out to protest was their desire to retain the health insurance they’ve already worked and paid for and to keep their taxes from going any higher to subsidize another government-mandated transfer of wealth.
On the contrary, Marco provides some interesting commentary about how the left manufactured a counter-protest using paid community organizers, actually stooping to the tactic of picking up people at random to hold their pre-manufactured, pro-reform signs.
This clinic is adjacent to Denver’s day laborer pickup street, Park Avenue. Being fluent in Spanish, El Marco asked these guys “¿hablan ingles?” “casi nada” was the reply from our amigo on the left. I asked him if he could tell me what the signs said. “¿Quien sabe?” (who knows?) was all he said to me, with a big grin.
That’s another face of the liberal left’s pro-reform radicalism. Like calling out the union bullies to physically assault anti-reform protesters in Tampa and St. Louis, the left’s paid presence in Denver makes it clear that there are insufficient numbers of organic supporters of the Democrats’ plans to satisfy its proponents. Therefore, the power to move their agenda forward has to be artificially generated, as it apparently was in Denver.
Think that’s overstating the case? Read Marco’s article yourself.