Calm down.

In the past few days I've had a number of friends express concern about the high numbers of Trump loyalists in the population. The usual handwringing is along the lines of "half the people in this country" support Trump, usually accompanied by suggestions that everyone in the mythical "half" would have been part of the mob at the Capitol last week if they could. Everyone knows at least one person who supported The Donald; now they're wondering if that relative or acquaintance is busy building pipe bombs in their basement and planning to assassinate the governor. (If you do know your neighbor is that nuts, call the FBI and let them deal with it.) 

I can understand why some friends are stressed. That huge ideological divide is, after all, the line the punditry keeps peddling, the fretting over the dramatic split right down the middle in the country, the split that doesn't actually exist. Yes, there is some fairly melodramatic posturing from the extremists at the fringes of the political spectrum, but just how reflective of the real world is it? Short answer: not very.

There are two ways to look at it. First, look at absolute numbers. There are an approximately 330 million people in the United States now. (For ease of discussion, I'm rounding numbers to closest millions.) Of those 330 million, less than half actually voted in the 2020 election: 81 million voted for Biden, 74 million voted for Trump, and about 2.5 million voted for various third party candidates. Why did less than half the populace vote? Well, some U.S. residents were too young (about a fourth of the population is under the age of 18), some were too old, some were resident aliens (not citizens), and some were simply not interested. 

Even though the number of eligible voters in the U.S. is somewhere around 227 million, only about two-thirds of those eligible voters bothered to vote -- and this was the best turnout in something like 100 years. Hard as it can be to believe for those of us who get riled up about politics, quite a few of our fellow citizens are thoroughly apathetic. Not everyone has a C-SPAN addiction, listens to talk radio, or always has a news channel on the television. Some have even taken the time to figure out how to set up their feeds on Facebook so all they ever see are bad puns (sorry about the redundancy) and pictures of cats or cows. It doesn't take much work to make sure you never see another post from CNN or Fox again. Quite a few people are content to just coast along, binge watching "Chopped" and figuring things will work out in the long run. 

Anyway, back to the numbers. 330  million yields 74 million Trump voters, or slightly over 22 percent of the total population. Of that 74 million, various polls show that a significant number have doubts about the election results. How significant? Anywhere from 40 percent to a little over 50 percent depending on the poll and when it was done. So if we go for the high side and say 50 percent that means 37 million or so. Of that 37 million, how many are, as mafia films put it, willing to go to the mattresses? You know, just how many are willing to go from griping about the results, calling their state's governor and other officials names on Facebook, and actually get on a bus or join a rally? 

That's when the commas in the numbers move, and move a lot. When women held a rally in 2017 to demonstrate their unhappiness with the election of Donald Trump an estimated million people showed up. When Trumpers held their rally meant to keep their hero in the White House, the resulting crowd was estimated at 7 to 10 thousand. Even most of the people who think there were shenanigans involved with the ballot counting in some states can't get fired up enough about it to bother getting on a bus. Like their hero, the typical Trumper can be real big on talking a lot but isn't particularly good at actually doing anything. The jokes about the insurrectionists at the riot at the Capitol that labeled the participants as cosplaying or being escapees from a Renaissance faire were a good critique: most of the people involved obviously live in some sort of bizarre alternative reality from the rest of us. 

Look at Bison Boy, the cosplaying QAnon shaman who is now sitting in jail: he's a 32 year old loser who lived with his mother and is now complaining that the federal detention center he's in doesn't serve organic food. There were others who were shocked, shocked, I tell you, that the police maced them or handled them roughly. My favorite was the blonde who was crying because police kept her from "storming the Capitol and starting the revolution." You know, please don't hurt me. I'm just here to overthrow the government. Obviously, the phrase "Kent State" has never entered their consciousness.  

In any case, everyone can stop worrying that every other person they see is secretly pining for a second term by Donald Trump. Even in deeply red parts of the country, it's more like maybe one out of ten, and even those people are going to keep their mouths shut most of the time. No one wants to talk politics at Dollar General. 

Then, if we use a different perspective and remove labels, it turns out that poll after poll has found the United States is a remarkably progressive country, which is why (and this is a subject for a different post) I think the political strategists who keep harping on about not going to far left on anything are dead wrong. Most people are remarkably progressive; they just don't realize it. The issues people care about, the things that actually impact their lives, are also things  the majority of us agree about. Most people want better health care, lower drug prices, higher wages, better schools, improved infrastructure, gun regulation, you name it. 

When researchers pose questions in a label-free way, i.e., no identification with a particular political party, the population shows a remarkable degree of consensus. Label something as an idea proposed by a Democrat, however, and suddenly people who thought it was a great idea before are now screaming No Socialism! Label something as proposed by a Republican and the same thing happens, except instead it will be called a gift to the rich or welfare for billionaires. 

The absolutely classic recent example of this is, of course, the Affordable Care and Patient Protection Act (aka Obama Care). The underlying basis for it was a proposal from the conservative think tank the Heritage Foundation. The Heritage Foundation came up with a plan as a counter argument to a single-payer government-run plan proposed by the Clinton administration. Neither idea went anywhere in the U.S. Congress, but the State of Massachusetts introduced a plan similar to the Heritage Foundation plan. At the time, Mitt Romney, a Republican, was Governor. By all accounts, Romney Care worked (and still works) reasonably well.

Fast forward 16 years to the Obama presidency. President Obama's administration puts together a proposal for a plan that would increase access to health care by helping people obtain private health insurance. It is clearly modeled on the Heritage Foundation and Romney care plans; it's roundly criticized by progressives as being a massive giveaway to the insurance companies. Despite it being at its heart a thoroughly conservative Republican plan, it is coming from a Democratic administration. Therefore, anyone who calls him or her self a Republican must hate it. Thus, the Republicans have spent the past 8 years trying to get rid of Obama Care, which they have learned to their horror many of their constituents actually love, except most of them never think of it as Obama Care. One of the more amusing things in watching ordinary people being interviewed is seeing just how many love the Affordable Care Act ("it saved my son's life!!") but are convinced Obama Care is the work of the devil. 

Bottom line: We're actually all a lot more alike than we realize. George Lakoff is right. Framing is everything.