So a Jack Cafferty viewer posed the question whether the attempted disruption will ultimately succeed. I believe that we can have this debate online in such a way that the agitators are thwarted.
The key is to have people attend debates in the same democratic spirit as the actual in-person ones. People hear from policy makers and other figures they deem trustworthy and knowledgeable. They engage in question and answer, and they discuss whatever they learned amongst themselves.
This could all be done in a way that is moderated by the group. Collective moderation takes a little work on the part of the participant- but presumably less than getting in their car and battling traffic and lines and screaming idiots to get into one of these things. The upside is that the format is such that the volume of one group's voices can not be used as a weapon (ie in lieu of a persuasive argument or germane question).
This idea is off the top of my head, but heck I figure its worth throwing out there...
During the debates, Youtube got into the serious "news business" with CNN. And individual politicians are using this kind of channel with various degrees of sophistication and success.
What I'm talking about is driving the masses to a YouTube Health Care Townhall platform as a targeted counter-tactic to the insurers' democracy jamming activity.
My breezy idea on this, and I know there are about 10,000 kossacks who know better, is to have a design whereby debaters are assigned into groups of a certain size, meeting at a specific time. They all have webcams and have prerecorded questions. Participants can also record questions as they go. Basically people vote on each others' questions, a certain number of which are sent on to the elected official or panel. Anyone who posts inane nonsense will be filtered out by their peers. Maybe a person can post up to three questions, but would have to review three other questions before being able to post one of their own. Trolls are flagged and bagged.
We can have a random lottery for questions during a live Q&A. There's a time limit, which can only be extended by a plurality of participants. Folks can then digest their info and continue to use the platform to discuss whatever details after the townhall.
Now I'm sure this is not a new idea, but perhaps this is the time for the idea to really make its debut on the big democracy stage...