Progressives flocked to DC this weekend in a rally billed as the liberal counterweight to Glenn Beck's Tea Party-fueled "
Restoring Honor" rally. Saturday's "One Nation Working Together" event
boasted
"More than 400 organizations — ranging from labor unions to faith,
environmental and gay rights groups." Per usual the rally's attendance
numbers are being disputed by the left and right. While a number of
progressive bloggers claim the "One Nation" rally drew a larger crowd
than Beck's August event, the Associated Press and others are
challenging that claim:
- We Beat the Beck Rally! cheers liberal blogger Nicole Belle
at Crooks and Liars: "Enthusiasm gap, schmenthusiasm gap. Without the
benefit of months and months of advertising and promotion on Fox News
Channel (in fact, I'm only aware of Ed Schultz on MSNBC doing any kind
of TV promotion), the One Nation Working Together rally in Washington DC
has gathered more supporters than Glenn Beck's much ballyhooed rally,
which I will lovingly refer to as 'Whitestock'. Preliminary satellite
estimates put the crowd size at 175,000 to 200,000 at about noon EST."
- Not a Chance, writes John Avlon
at The Daily Beast: "For all the chanting about how 'the people,
united, will never be divided,' this turnout was small, and suffering
from an enthusiasm gap compared to the conservative populists who
crowded the mall a month ago for Glenn Beck’s 'Restoring Honor' Rally."
- Beck's Rally Was Probably Bigger, reports Philip Elliott
at The Associated Press: "Organizers claimed they had as many
participants as Beck's rally. But Saturday's crowds were less dense and
didn't reach as far to the edges as they did during Beck's rally. The
National Park Service stopped providing official crowd estimates in the
1990s."
Organizers
of today’s "One Nation Together Rally" are claiming that, based on a
"satellite image," there are definitively more people on the Washington
Mall today than there were on the 29th of August. Congratulations,
liberals! Except 'Restoring Honor' was on the 28th.
It was bound
to happen that the organizers of this rally, the goal of which was
decidedly to undermine the strength in numbers of the Tea Party, would
claim to have brought together a larger number of people than Glenn
Beck’s crew. Given the lack of evidence on this count, it’s certainly
remotely possible, but claiming that it’s absolutely true based on one
satellite image that no one was yet seen is a little, shall we say,
premature. That said, it is a near certainty that there are more people
congregated on the Mall today than there were on August 29th, given that
there was no event scheduled to occur in the Mall on that date.
- The Actual Numbers Are Elusive, writes Mark Memmott
at NPR. Organizers for the "One Nation" rally say their crowd size was
175,000 people. Meanwhile Beck estimated his rally at 500,000. "Bear in
mind that CBS News paid for some analysis of the crowd size at Beck's rally and was told that about 87,000 folks came," writes Memmott.
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