I’ve been in some genuinely massive protests in New York and Washington, DC, where crowd estimates were between 200,000 and 400,000, so I know what a crowd that size looks like and how much space it fills. So I’ve looked at the photographs Malkin has on her website that allegedly shows a crowd of “up to 2 million” in Washington, DC, for the 9/12 rally. No way. It’s hard to tell from photographs, but ABCNews.com reported an approximate figure of 60,000 to 70,000 protesters, attributed to the Washington, D.C., fire department. Official estimates tend to be low, so if the teabaggers claimed 100,000 (which is very respectable, although not spectacular) I wouldn’t argue with them. But 2 million is fantasyland stuff.
See also Josh Marshall.