One of the nagging questions during Tea Party 2009 has been just how large a block of citizens and voters does the right-wing movement represent? And is the movement really big enough to justify the kind of saturation coverage its events and priorities have generated from the press?

Last April 15, Tea Parties were respectfully attended. The health care mini-mobs, which the Tea Party movement helped fuel, generated an avalanche of media attention, but most of the forums attracted crowds in the hundreds and occasionally in the thousands, which is rather modest for a supposedly national movement in a country of nearly 300 million.

And of course, when the Tea Party followers staged its Sept. 12, anti-Obama rally in Washington, D.C., organizers and supporters, perhaps disappointed by the turn out, felt the urge to completely concoct crowd estimates; estimates that were off by 1.9 million people. More recently, the Tea Bag followers protested in D.C., and once again supporters were forced to wildly inflate the numbers.

But if the Tea Party brigade actually represented a national movement, wouldn't they have had at least 300-400,000 marching in D.C? More recently, anti-immigration-flavored Tea Party events fell completely flat. And the country's first unofficial Tea Party candidate for Congress, Doug Hoffman, famously lost to a Democrat in NY-23; a district that hadn't sent a Democrat to Congress in 150 years. So yeah, the track record remains suspect.

I raise that point because there appears to be early signs of a grassroots movement forming on the left, and if the press has showered the noisy Tea Party activists all year with time and attention, than it ought to be willing to do the same for national progressive activists.

From a Reform Immigration for America announcement this week:

Tonight, more than 60,000 activists, families, friends, and neighbors gathered for a nationwide tele-town hall event that created even greater momentum for comprehensive immigration reform legislation in 2010. The national teleconference was put together by an enormous coalition of faith, law enforcement, labor, civil rights, and immigrant advocacy groups working together to pass comprehensive immigration reform this year. The breadth and size of the coalition was reflected in the massive numbers of people who joined the call. The Reform Immigration FOR America Campaign organized 1,009 house parties in 45 states and Puerto Rico.