Democrats Finally Have a Plan to Fight Back
Republicans in Congress are refusing to hold town halls in their districts out of fear of criticism, and now Democrats are swooping in.
In Wisconsin, Representative Derrick Van Orden didn’t show up at a town hall meeting Tuesday in his district in Viroqua, so Democratic Representative Mark Pocan showed up, speaking to 300 people next to an empty chair with Van Orden’s name on it.
“Derrick was a NO SHOW, but over 300 people in the town of 4500 showed up. Empty seat for him,” Pocan posted on X. “Of note: Derrick doesn’t respond to constituents & they don’t like cuts to Medicaid & other programs.”
Van Orden “is afraid of his constituents, and he can be fired in 2026,” Pocan noted in a follow-up post. The Republican congressman plans to switch to virtual town halls, calling protesters at Republican-led town halls “George Soros-funded agitators” and comparing them to Nazis.
Pocan has done this before to Van Orden, mocking the Republican for being “on vacation” last month after Van Orden and other Republicans refused to show up at a Wisconsin Farmers Union event where farmers spoke on their concerns with Donald Trump’s policies. And it appears that Democrats elsewhere may soon take a similar approach.
The Democratic National Committee announced Wednesday that it will put up billboards in Republican districts in Arizona, Colorado, Florida, Iowa, Michigan, Missouri, Nebraska, and Pennsylvania telling local residents to push their members of Congress to hold town halls. The billboards will even include these Republicans’ phone numbers.
“Republicans are refusing to meet with their constituents after voting to take away health care and make it harder for families to put food on the table,” the new chair of the DNC, Ken Martin, said in a statement. “This isn’t surprising—over the last few months, one word has come to describe Republicans: cowards.”
Minnesota Governor Tim Walz, who was Kamala Harris’s running mate in 2024, is also holding events in Republican districts, visiting Eau Claire, Wisconsin, in Van Orden’s district on Tuesday for a “People v. Musk” rally following earlier visits to Iowa and Nebraska. Senator Bernie Sanders has held several rallies in Republican territory, and he and Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez plan to visit Nevada, Arizona, and Colorado later this week.
Will it help, though? Democrats are currently struggling to come up with an effective plan to fight against Trump and the GOP’s massive overhaul of the federal government. Meanwhile, tech oligarch Elon Musk is throwing millions of dollars into political races to shore up support for the Trump agenda. The Democrats need to grab the attention of an already frustrated electorate and leverage its rage against the GOP.