If anyone questioned why Barack Obama and Nancy Pelosi wanted to get a health-care reform bill passed before the August recess, the following videos will explain it clearly.  In three town-hall meetings with Democratic denizens of Capitol Hill, crowds reacted angrily to a government takeover of health care.  In the first, Rep. Keith Ellison moves through the crowd in his very liberal district taking comments — but not answering any of his constituents’ questions (via Janet at SCSU Scholars):

The reaction in this clip is almost universally negative, and downright hostile. When one man reads a prepared question asking Ellison whether he’d put forego his “Cadillac plan” as a Congressman and put his family on ObamaCare, Ellison plays emcee rather than answer it — and another constituent loudly demands his response.

Rep. Lloyd Doggett’s crowd was even more hostile in his Blue Dog district of Texas (via Power Line and John Lott):

Back in Central Texas while Congress is on a month-long recess, U.S. Rep. Lloyd Doggett faced an angry audience at a town hall meeting at an Austin Randalls grocery store Saturday.

Doggett, D-Austin, spoke at the store at Brodie and Slaughter lanes. A video of the event on YouTube shows that many in the crowd had signs denouncing President Barack Obama’s proposed health care plan.

Witnesses said that when Doggett was asked whether he would support the plan even if he found that his constituents opposed it, Doggett said he would. People then began chanting “just say no” and overwhelmed the congressman as he moved through the crowd and into the parking lot.

Meanwhile, back in Pennsylvania, newly-minted Democrat Arlen Specter finds out that Pennsylvanians don’t much care for the rush to have government pass bills that their representatives don’t read. HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius doesn’t help much when she tries to defend the honor of people like John Conyers (via Michelle):

The administration knew that supporters of ObamaCare would encounter not just opposition, but outright anger once they returned to face their constituents. They wanted to ram ObamaCare through Congress before constituents had a chance to have their say. Specter and Doggett would have expected to hear resistance among their constituents, but Ellison perhaps was the most surprised. MN-05 is as safely Democratic and liberal as any seat in Congress (which is why Ellison, an acolyte of Louis Farrakhan, won the seat in the first place). If a Democrat gets a hostile reception in MN-05, it’s just about akin to Nancy Pelosi getting booed in San Francisco.

If Pelosi and Obama had a tough time holding the Blue Dogs before the recess, they will have a lot more headaches when Congress returns in September — and hopefully a lot more skeptics as well.