Their eagerness to change the subject is one sign Democrats are beginning to understand how deeply unpopular Obamacare is.
Democrats would rather talk about how stupid, bigoted and violent are the Tea Partiers who protest Obamacare.
"The Federal Bureau of Investigation, and the House Sergeant at arms on Wednesday were brought into a closed door Democratic Caucus meeting, during which lawmakers expressed fear for their safety and the safety of their families," the Politico reported March 25.
"We've had very serious incidents that have occurred over the last 48, 72 hours," House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, D-Maryland, said that day.
"The reports of threats, coming after a tense weekend when protesters hurled racial and homophobic slurs at Democrats and spit on one Congressman, left many Democrats shaken," reported the Seattle Times.
ABC, NBC and CBS led their newscasts that night with Democratic claims of threats of violence.
Rep. Russ Carnahan, D-Mo, interpreted it as a death threat when protesters carried a coffin outside his home. But television station KDSK, which covered the protest, reported it was peaceful, and quoted a spokesman as saying the coffin represented "the death of our freedom."
A rock was thrown through the window of the Cincinnati office of Rep. Steve Driehaus, D-Ohio, the Seattle Times reported. Since Rep. Driehaus' office is on the 30th floor of an office building, this was unlikely. Mr. Driehaus' spokesman claimed he was misquoted. The Seattle Times subsequently issued a correction.
The Times has yet to issue a correction for stating as fact that "protesters hurled racial and homophobic slurs at Democrats," but it ought to.
When he walked to the Capitol to cast his vote for Obamacare, he was called the N word by protesters, Rep. John Lewis, D-Georgia, claimed.
But none of the many video cameras recording the event picked it up. Andrew Breitbart of Big Journalism.com offered to pay $100,000 to anyone who could provide proof that even one protester used the N word. There have been no takers.
Tea partiers must be racist, Democrats imply, because why else would anyone oppose Barack Obama's agenda?
But Mr. Obama's skin color was well known in 2008, when he was elected president by a comfortable margin, and at his inauguration, when he began his presidency with the highest approval rating (68 percent) since John F. Kennedy.
What wasn't known by most then was that Mr. Obama is a left wing radical who is spending us into bankruptcy.
On March 29, the FBI announced it had arrested a man who threatened to kill a congressman and his family. NBC mentioned the arrest only in passing. CBS and ABC mentioned it not at all.
Could that be because the congressman threatened, Eric Cantor of Virginia, is a Republican, and the person making the threat, Norman Leboom of Philadelphia, is a Barack Obama supporter?
The fact that Mr. Leboom contributed to Barack Obama in no way suggests the president condones what he has done. There are on the fringes left and right some disturbed individuals who make threats and commit petty acts of violence. The evidence suggests Republicans are as likely to be the targets of such threats as Democrats, but the news media choose to emphasize only those made against Democrats.
No tea party leader has said anything so threatening as has Washington Post columnist Courtland Milloy, who said of the tea partiers that he wants to "knock every racist and homophobic tooth out of their Cro-Magnon heads."
Who are the tea partiers Democrats and the news media demonize? According to a Quinnipiac survey released March 24, they are older, whiter and more female (55 percent are women) than the population as a whole, but solidly middle class. Though most are conservatives, 15 percent voted for Barack Obama.
When the Communist regime in East Germany brutally suppressed a popular protest in 1953, the playwright Bertolt Brecht wrote: "The people have lost the confidence of the government; the government has decided to dissolve the people, and appoint another one."
Democrats seem to have taken a page from the East Germans' book. But rarely in a democracy does attacking your constituents lead to success at the polls.
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