Ed Schultz, you’re no Glenn Beck: Why “One America” rally just didn’t measure up
The hope of the organizers of Saturday’s “One America” rally in Washington was that a big turnout — something on par with the crowd Glenn Beck and Sarah Palin attracted at the end of August — would alter the media’s midterm campaign narrative, which to date has emphasized the energy of the Republican base and the likelihood of sizable GOP gains in November.
And, to the organizers’ credit, the turnout, to the extent it could really be measured, seemed impressive enough. But while we might want to take this as proof that the “enthusiasm gap” is vanishing and that the left is suddenly mobilized in a way that will save Democrats in November, the reality is that Saturday’s rally was not an election-altering event.
For one thing, the number of people who showed up is pretty much meaningless. Surely, we’ve learned by now that the size of crowds at political rallies can be, and often is, a woefully misleading indicator of mass opinion. Remember when Ralph Nader was drawing 15,000 paying attendees to his “super-rallies” in 2000? And when he finished with 2.7 percent of the vote?
Read the whole story at Salon’s War Room
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