POLITICAL NUMBERS

Fats Limbaugh falsely tried to claim that there were only a few hundred protesters in Madison, Wisconsin, telling his listeners "don't doubt me."   Today I find that rightwing bloggers are trying to downplay yesterday's nationwide rallies for the unions in Wisconsin, notably William A. Jacobson at Legal Insurrection and Krazy Jim Hoft at Gateway Pundit.  Jacobson is basing his critique on a prediction by John Nichols of The Nation that a million people would participate.

I don't think Nichols was in any sense a leader of the Saturday rallies and I also don't think the success of them depends on whether his prediction is borne out. It's enough that non-negligible numbers of people turned out all across the country.