The One Nation organizers of the rally in Washington are licking wounds right now. The crowd was much smaller than was anticipated, inspite of free transportation and a few hundred members of the SEIU who really had no choice but to be there.

Bell Zarcako is one of the local Democrat organizers of the event and a friend. I called him to get an idea of the crowd size. He told me that it was a large crowd much much smaller than that of the Beck rally and much smaller than they anticipated.

“We’re blaming it on college football” he told me. I quipped that I didn’t know that liberals were football fans.

Even the AP couldn’t fudge the numbers.

“More than 400 organizations — ranging from labor unions to faith, environmental and gay rights groups — partnered for the event, which comes one month after Beck packed the same space with conservatives and tea party-style activists.

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.”

Gateway Pundit notes that CSPAN used a picture from the Restoring Honor rally to portray today’s event. Typical.

UPDATE: Doug Ross has pics and more.