Yesterday, President Obama held a high-stakes town hall meeting in New Hampshire to discuss the current health care reform push. It could have been a disaster, considering all the violence and heckling and shoving that's been erupting at similar town hall events held by Democratic Senators and Representatives during the August recess.

But it wasn't a disaster. It went just fine. No violence. No heckling. No shoving. No trouble, in the end, from even this guy.

True, Obama has some advantages. He arrives at his town halls (two more are planned for this month, one in Montana and one in Colorado) with much more security and stage-managing than the average member of Congress. But the event in New Hampshire nevertheless reminded that a Democrat who's in command of the facts, and is willing to lay them out in an unpredictable public appearance, can rise above all the current nonsense and get across a message about the importance of real health care reform.

So why aren't more Democrats in Washington's Congressional delegation willing to head "into the lion's den"—as a headline on the HuffingtonPost yesterday described Obama's trip to the New Hampshire town hall meeting—and take on a skeptical public?

After all, this isn't Lebanon, Pennsylvania or Tampa, Florida. It should be pretty easy for our representatives to tangle with whatever anxiety about health care reform exists in Washington State. It shouldn't be a terrifying thing for them to stand up and make the case that Congress needs to pass a real reform package this year.

There are fears that right-wing teabaggers will disrupt the meeting anyway. But if they do, so what? Is McDermott not capable of rhetorically demolishing their insane, paranoid arguments about Obama wanting to create a "death panel" in order to kill grandmothers across the land? Can McDermott, who has tangled with some pretty tough characters during his many years in Congress, really not make the case for health care reform if the crowd is a little rough?

When I asked McDermott's office last week about his plans for talking to constituents about health care reform during the August recess, I was told he'd be doing a telephone town hall (a new, safer approach that many members of Congress have come to love this summer), as well as a press conference and an event at a private home. No open-to-the-public town halls on his agenda.

Congressman Jay Inslee has also become a fan of the telephone town hall, though his office assured me he'd be doing one live, in-person town hall sometime this month—but wouldn't reveal the date, time, or location. Congressman Brian Baird, saying he fears an ambush by teabaggers and other reform opponents, has flat-out sworn off public town halls; he will only phone it in this August. Senator Patty Murray's office says she will be doing small events across the state. ("The town hall is not a format that she often uses," said her spokesman, Eli Zupnick. "She prefers doing smaller meetings with constituents.”) And the August public schedule for Senator Maria Cantwell, as sent to the press late last week, doesn't even include the words "health care," much less a town hall meeting on the subject.

It appears Congressman Rick Larsen is the only Democrat in this state willing to truly embrace the town hall format. He's done several of them already, and will be doing another this afternoon in Everett. If you're on the e-mail list for Organizing for America—the successor to Obama's online campaign operation—you probably already know this because you've received the following plea:

Standing up for insurance reform in Everett with Rep. Larsen (Health Care Public Event)

Our representatives are under attack by Washington insiders, insurance companies, and well-financed special interests who don't go a day without spreading lies and stirring up fear. We need to show that we're sick and tired of it, and that we're ready for real change, this year.

Please come to the Health Care event, and make sure that the most powerful voices in this debate are those calling for real reform.

This is all part of the Obama administration's promise to be there for members of Congress who stick their necks out this August. "If you get hit, we will punch back twice as hard," they've told people like Larsen. Organized labor has made a similar vow to show up and defend Democrats against unruly mobs intent on disrupting health care town halls.

So, again, what exactly is scaring Jim and Jay and Brian and Patty and Maria?

Yeah, chaotic images from a town hall meeting can look bad. But those doing the disrupting usually end up looking the worst. And you know what looks great? A Democrat who stands up and, despite the tension of an unpredictable format, is able to explain the importance of health care reform and tell the teabaggers to grow up, as Obama did yesterday, saying: "Where we do disagree, let’s disagree over things that are real, not these wild misrepresentations that bear no resemblance to anything that has actually been proposed."