My wife and I ended up at the huge health care protest today. We hadn’t even known there was going to be an event (cut us some slack, it’s been busy) until I read in the paper (yes, I read a paper – I hope my 75 cents keeps the Post alive for another day or two) that the organizers of the event had a bomb threat yesterday. We decided to go, and it was very interesting.

Capitol police say about 1.5 million people were there; other estimates have topped 2 million. Honestly, that seems (very) high, but it’s notoriously difficult to get a good count when you’re in the middle of the crowd. I would have guessed a few hundred thousand – maybe a million on the high end. It was a very polite crowd, and from what I saw the (tiny) group of counterprotestors wasn’t abused. (OK, I did march along with them for a few moments shouting “I want free money! Free money now!”, but my wife made me come back. Spoilsport.)

99% of the crowd were people who have never been in a protest in their entire life. The crowd was older – lots and lots of vets and cornfed Midwestern types. Interestingly, the Mall was left quite clean when everyone had left – conservatives pick up their trash, I guess. The other half of the mall was reserved for a black family group having a huge “family reunion” and picnic – despite the rampant racism and black hatred, our 2 million didn’t go and beat up their hundred thousand or so. (Maybe the racists didn’t want to embarrass the black people marching with us.)

LOTS of signs, mostly handmade. Some organizations and media figures have been beating the drum for this apparently (I can’t stand Glenn Beck so we never watch his show) but everybody there we talked to had gotten themselves to DC, no astroturf that we could see beyond the scattering of pre-printed signs. I was absolutely shocked at the size of the crowd; we got onto the Metro to go into DC at Shady Grove, the northernmost red line stop, and the line for the farecards filled the entire lobby as a bunch of people who had never been to DC before tried to figure out the system. (It didn’t help that there are now two different kinds of farecards.) The whole Metro system was semi-overwhelmed by the numbers, but they did a great job keeping everybody moving and other than the crowds the transportation situation was quite smooth.

It’s hard to figure the impact of events like this. But if I was a moderate Democrat congressman on the fence, I think I would have just been pushed off. There are a lot more people out there who won’t stand for what they see as socialized medicine, than people had guessed.

Later we went to the National Gallery of Art and looked at the Spanish swords and armor display, which was pretty awesome. Armor-making by the gunpowder age had become a truly refined science, and they had some replica pieces made of stainless steel you could try on. Anyone who wants to see a photo of me clutching a mailed gauntlet to my chest or wearing a visored helmet should check here next week when I get home and get a chance to upload pictures.

I’m currently shopping for a gauntlet of my own.