tea party numbers
This makes the third person I know of who says there’s no way 2M people showed up.
Remember, I do this to entertain me, not you.
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September 15th, 2009 at 11:29 am
The photo published with the claims of millions is missing the new American Indian museum and depicts a Promise Keeper rally from the 1990s. Fail.
September 15th, 2009 at 11:48 am
Conservative activists, who organized a march on the U.S. Capitol today in protest of the Obama administration’s health care agenda and government spending, erroneously attributed reports on the size of the crowds to ABC News.
Matt Kibbe, president of FreedomWorks, the group that organized the event, said on stage at the rally that ABC News was reporting that 1 million to 1.5 million people were in attendance.
At no time did ABC News, or its affiliates, report a number anywhere near as large. ABCNews.com reported an approximate figure of 60,000 to 70,000 protesters, attributed to the Washington, D.C., fire department. In its reports, ABC News Radio described the crowd as “tens of thousands.”
Brendan Steinhauser, spokesman for FreedomWorks, said he did not know why Kibbe cited ABC News as a source.
As a result of Kibbe’s erroneous attribution, several bloggers and commenters repeated the misinformation.
September 15th, 2009 at 12:48 pm
Who let the bean counters be in charge? Everybody’s worried about quantification when they should be considering the qualification. What we know there were a lot of people there. I watched the traffic cams for only an hour and the number of people streaming by were impressive. They filled Pennsylvania Avenue from Freedom Plaza to the Capitol for 2 1/2 hours as they marched.
A very large group of people who don’t do protests, who paid their own way to DC, who paid for their own signs. Now consider how many more couldn’t afford a trip to DC or had other obligations. Sure the MSM ignored the protest, that was expected, but the group wasn’t there to get a seat at the table. It was a warning that they were going to be puling the chairs from under those at the table if they didn’t start acting in accordance with mainstream America.
September 15th, 2009 at 1:03 pm
Being there myself, I would say that it could easily have filled an NFL stadium more than twice. Was it 2 million? No. But it was definitely more than 100,000.
September 15th, 2009 at 1:48 pm
Yeah, I’d agree with Blake.
I updated my post with some pictures – and a graphic from USA Today that shows crowd size from the Obama Inauguration. Based on that, I’d say it was definitely over 100,000 – probably close to 200-300,000 (the info I had dated back to seat for the Bush’s inauguration in 2001 – which I worked at as an usher and I guess had a different seating arrangement since it had fewer people in the area).
September 15th, 2009 at 1:51 pm
Blake – i actually didn’t compare it to an NFL stadium, but rather a large concert
September 15th, 2009 at 2:21 pm
I’ve been searching the web for confirmation on the size. Now, think about this, the permit was only for the lawn in front of the Capitol. Not the Mall. How many were they expecting? No matter how many there actually was, it was a success beyond their wildest dreams.
The best estimates I’ve seen say between 250,000 to 350,000, based on the time lapse video of the march and other sources.
September 15th, 2009 at 3:02 pm
Whatever the number, it was far larger than anything I’ve seen in 12 years of living in DC (not including the 4th of july and innaugurations (Clinton, Bush, Bush, Obama).
September 15th, 2009 at 7:53 pm
The original permit was for 2000 people. I’m sure it was revised as people registered. I was there, right up front, and I really do think it was WAY more then 250,000 based on what I saw from up there near the stage and comparing it to the graphic used to estimate crowds for Obama’s inauguration. Hell, there were people still coming in at 2-3pm as well as people leaving. Remember, this event ended up running 8hrs long. I did not sit, or use a bathroom for 9hrs. Many people could not handle that, or had very long drives home again and left early.
In any case, even if we use the 250,000 number, that’s 1/4 of 1 percent of all likely voters in the USA. Doesn’t sound like much, but to think even that percentage of voters traveled from all corners of the country on their own dime, with little real organization. This really was done word of mouth and via social networking. I’m reasonably close, and all told I spent somewhere around $700 for my wife and I.
Also, for every person who went, there were probably ten more who wanted to go and couldn’t. Now you are looking at 2-3% of likely voters. That’s enough to sway most elections, and the politicians, republicans and democrats alike had better take notice, or else.
September 16th, 2009 at 4:16 pm
Good, because they already had their seat at the table—for years. They lost it in what is referred to as an “election.”
Yeah, fuck elections and Democracy, that shit is stupid. If our guy doesn’t win, we’ll threaten the winner with overthrow.
As if the Tea Partiers themselves are reflective of mainstream America. They are no more in line with mainstream America than the left wing extremists are. Mainstream America doesn’t think Obama was born in Kenya, and doesn’t think he’s a Nazi, just like they didn’t think GWB was a Nazi and didn’t think he orchestrated 9/11.
Sorry, it’s true.
September 16th, 2009 at 4:23 pm
And most tea partiers don’t either. But when you find the few nutjobs, point the cameras at them.
September 16th, 2009 at 5:54 pm
We’ve all seen the websites and blogs that posted all the goofy signs that the anti-war protestors held and LOLd about how crazy and dumb they are. Same thing. Sure, they’re not all lunatics, but there’s enough of them to make it embarrassing haha …. I’ve seen a whole lot of crazy in the 9/12 pictures so far. Is there a website somewhere that I can view all the non-crazy protestors with the rational signs?
September 16th, 2009 at 7:43 pm
i’ve seen quite a few non crazy ones. The racism one was pretty good.