Well, I can only say that sentiment is not new. There have been people on the left that have always felt that way. But no rally or march based on that kind of thinking was able to stick. I don't know what it's like in Chicago, but this has been going on en masse for three weeks in NYC.
People instinctively try to pick out and caricature mass movements that make them feel uncomfortable. It's easy to do because any huge crowd protesting something is going to have a range of fringe elements. But once a movement reaches a tipping point with volume, the only fuel that sustains it has to be legitimate.
I still think this is fundamentally different from the Arab Spring phenomenon. But I'm no longer convinced this is a leftist Tea Party: i.e., the motivated, principled contingent of a political ideology that's always been there.
