It's Time To Stop Obsessing About The Tea Party Numbers...

I wasn’t going to write this article, but I am getting increasingly annoyed at how some talking heads on the right are misusing this Tea Party Protest in Washington.

What happened in Washington, D.C. on Saturday was amazing. A huge number of patriotic and dedicated Americans turned out to have their voices heard. They were average people, not activists. They were people who love America deeply and don’t like what Team Obama is doing to this country. For most, this was the first time they’d ever done anything like this. And they sent a powerful message.

Without any doubt, they won an incredible victory. Indeed, in my lifetime, I’ve seen dozens of these protests, and I have never seen the immediate response that this protest got.

On Friday, the Democrats were demanding a public option as part of health care reform. Public option or no deal, they told us. By Sunday morning, after the rally, they were in full retreat on the talk shows. Even Robert Gibbs said that Obama only wanted “competition” and he downplayed the need for a public option -- calling it only “one way” to go. A half dozen key Democrats agreed. Olympia Snowe said "no way" to the public option. Susan Collins rejected the “triggered option.”

This is a victory, and it belongs to the wonderful and patriotic Americans who showed up in D.C.

So what’s troubling me?

First and foremost, I am really annoyed at the numbers game that many of the talking heads are playing with this rally. The numbers don’t matter! Let me say that again, the numbers don’t matter! What matters are two things (1) that there were way more people than expected and (2) (more importantly) these weren’t professional protesters, these were average people.

Why does that matter? Because Congress knows what happens on the Mall. They send their aides to go mingle. They know when they are dealing with a flood of worked up Americans or with indifferent, paid protesters. And they know these were real Americans, very upset and very determined, but also very average. These were the kinds of people who may or may not always vote in elections, but who will vote now. They know it, and they know they need to listen to these people. The proof of that came Sunday morning.

But by obsessing about the numbers, the talking heads are simply giving people a reason to see the rally as a failure. If I insist that the rally was a success because two million people showed up, and you think only 100,000 showed up, then it becomes very easy for you to dismiss the rally as a failure because it couldn’t even overcome the hurdles I set for calling it a success.

And arguing over whether or not it was two million or less, just distracts from what these people achieved. We should not be whining about the numbers. Instead, we should be out there trumpeting the success, and talking about how the Democrats have already given in on the public option, and demanding more -- cut spending, reduce the debt, lower regulation, stop interfering with the economy! We should not be turning victory into defeat by, after the fact, setting up impossible hurdles for success.

And I can assure you that the numbers being bandied about simply cannot be supported. Lets take the two million number that most of the talking heads now treat as Holy Writ (down, I might add, from initial estimates by “anonymous sources” of 4.5 million). Consider these facts:

First, when the National Park Service used to estimate crowd sizes, the activists always complained that they were underestimating by a factor of two. For example, the Park Service estimated the Million Man March at 400,000 (activists insisted it was 850,000). The same was true with every single rally that took place during the many, many years I lived in the D.C. area.

Once the Park Service stopped estimating crowds, all of the estimates -- across the board, left, right and center -- went up by a factor of 10. Suddenly, a crowd the Park Service would have called 100,000 people became one million. Overestimating by a factor of ten is a longtime human tradition.

Secondly, do the math. Look at the chart Bev provided us. This chart is consistent with other numbers I’ve see for the square footage of the mall. According to this chart, only 1.1 million people can be at the Mall in ideal circumstances. So forget the 2 million and the 4.5 million figures right away. Sure, there is more room if the crowd flows over into the side streets, but nowhere near another 100% the size of the Mall.



Further, look at the legend on the chart. The 1.1 million figure assumes 2.5 square feet per person. Think about that. Go get a ruler and see if you aren’t more than thirty inches wide and twelve inches deep. Moreover, consider that to get the 2.5 square feet footage also means that people need to be packed in together, literally touching each other side by side, front to back. That doesn’t happen except at the very front of rock concerts.

If you expand the amount of area needed to just two feet by three feet, which is still only a couple inches apart on each side, the 1.1 million capacity suddenly falls to 450,000 people.

Now read the Elves again, about finding some place to sit down, and look at the pictures and see the spaces between people. These people are not stacked like cord wood. They are allowing several feet between themselves and the people around them. All of that space drops the number significantly. Moreover, as anyone who has ever been in a crowd can tell you, the further back you go into the crowd, the greater the open space.

So how many really showed up? I don’t know and I don’t care. And you shouldn’t either. . . it’s not the number that made this a success. It’s the fact that they came and who they were. And this is the point the talking heads are missing.

What’s more, many of these same people are using this event as a means to boost their own ratings by beating the drums of paranoia. They scream that ABC and MSNBC and the foreign press “confirmed” the two million number, and now suddenly are backing off “to only a few thousand.” The conclusion? Knowing suggestions that Team Obama called the press and got the number “suppressed.”

Wrong.

First of all, no one “confirmed” the two million number. If you don’t believe me, go find a link. Even Drudge hasn’t put a number on the rally because no media source gave an estimate. What they’ve all said instead was “estimates ranged from a few thousand to two million.” That’s not a confirmation of anything.

And where does this two million estimate come from? It’s from a quote by a Democratic aide, who spoke on Friday night, and said, “we don’t know how many are coming, it could be a few thousand up to two million.” That’s not confirmation either.

Nor are the media now saying “only a few thousand.” Almost universally, the media are reporting “tens of thousands,” which is the sort of thing media types say when they don’t know and they don’t want to be accused of over-stating or understating a large number. There’s no conspiracy to suppress “the evidence” here. There is bias -- they should have been covering this rally much more thoroughly, but there’s no conspiracy to hide the truth.

So what’s my point? My point is that a lot of people need to stop diminishing the victory won by these great Americans who showed up on the Mall. Stop playing this stupid numbers game. And stop spinning a misread quote into a vast conspiracy to suppress the truth. These protesters have won a great victory. Help them make it a bigger victory, don’t try to turn it into a failure.