Occupy May Day Report Card: FAIL

Well, Occupy’s big May Day demonstration has come and gone. How did they do? Here’s my take; please add your own in comments.

Attendance : D+
For an event literally months in the making, the crowd turnout was weak coast to coast. I’m being a fair standard here; compared to other Occupy events from last fall, the numbers everywhere were smaller. Compared to other leftist events such as Wisconsin, the numbers were smaller.

Leftist Thuggery: A
While their numbers were small, the level of violent, crazy Black Bloc behavior got pretty intense. Especially in liberal west coast cities like Seattle and Oakland, the wanna-be ninja squads broke windows, spray painted and generally made a mess. They harassed cops with gusto, too — throwing bottles, screaming obscenities and taunting the police to try to encourage a violent reaction from law enforcement.

Nationwide Strike : F
Occupy has claimed that this would be the first nationwide strike in the country’s history — no school, no work, no shopping. You missed it too, right? A nation of over 300 million paid zero attention to the supposed spokespeople for the 99%.

Media Exposure : D
Look at headlines around the country and Occupy’s May Day barely registered. The broken glass to media coverage link was shockingly small. Big fail for the tattered remnants of the  Occupy media team, who were trumped by the Black Bloc’s now predicable rage against the machine.

Big Symbolic Events : D
No Golden Gate shutdown; the unions nixed it. They managed to make commuter traffic bad in New York late in the evening but that’s not exactly unusual. I give them points for effectively shutting down LAX, another move guaranteed to win them no fans. In San Francisco they caused the ferries to shut down but there was no visceral moment from that.

Political Impact : F
Those salad days of being praised by President Obama and Nancy Pelosi seem to be over. Of course, they would criticize the mob violence, but you didn’t hear a peep from the Democratic establishment yesterday. Even at liberal nutjob paradise DailyKos, the Kos Kommunity was eerily quiet about May Day.

Summary : FAIL
Sorry, far leftists — Occupy has fizzled. You’re going to have to come up with some new tricks if you want to remain an even remotely relevant force in the public discourse. You had the media on your side, you had academia on your side…gosh, you had the President of the United States of America on your side — and you blew it.

Will you go away now? Of course you won’t. You’ll find some new gimmick to try to sell the American people on leftist revolution.

We know it won’t be easy but don’t worry, though. You’ll have lots to be angry about under the Romney Administration.