The Benator couldn’t even eat a plate of pasta without someone barking at him during the health care fight. And yet, when I reached him, he said he’s still in favor of town halls.

Nelson said that civility in politics has eroded and cited the Tea Party movement for beginning that erosion. “What did the Tea Party think would ultimately happen?” he said. “You start this, and you are going to get pushback from the other side.” But, he said, that lack of civility shouldn’t much matter to lawmakers.

“You have to talk to all the people, even the wild abusive crowds,” he told me. “I think you learn more when you are under fire than when people are praising you. You have to remember that you represent all the people, not just those who agree with you.”

Lee Terry kept returning to that idea during our conversation, the idea that he always felt it important to reach out to constituents — even when those constituents didn’t feel like reaching back.

Town hall meetings are important, he argued, in part because many people who come to them simply want help with a small personal matters that can sometimes be resolved by a lawmaker’s staff.