For a while, I couldn’t find a single protester outside the convention, much less a Chicago seven.

CHICAGO — They said tens of thousands of protesters would be here. They claimed they would “shut down the DNC for Gaza.” Like the Chicago riots during the 1968 Democratic convention, their demonstrations would snarl the city, shake the party and doom the candidacy of “Genocide Joe.”

Then came Kamala Harris — and the protest fizzled.

Organizers anticipated there would be 30,000 to 40,000 protesters on hand for Monday’s kickoff. But only a few thousand showed up; police estimated 3,500.

“There were more reporters than protesters,” observed Bennett Weiss. He was there selling Gaza-related buttons, including one that, he said, describes himself: “Self-Ambivalent Jew Against Zionism.”

As the smaller-than-expected group assembled in Union Park near the United Center, hundreds of signs reading “Victory to the Palestinian Resistance” were left stacked and unused. (They were the work of the “Freedom Road Socialist Organization.”) The protesters had their street puppets and their giant bloody hands. They denounced “Killer Kamala” along with Genocide Joe. I heard nary a mention of Oct. 7 or Hamas’s hostages, but clarion calls for the destruction of Israel: “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free. From the sea to the river, Palestine will live forever.”

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Still, the first question from a reporter at a news conference by the organizers was about whether the loss of Biden as their foil had “changed the crowd size.” An organizer said “we won’t know that for a couple more hours.”

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A few hours later, we knew. Only 100 people attended a protest march on the DNC by the “Poor People’s Army,” and that was after they delayed the start by 90 minutes. With Green Party candidate Jill Stein in attendance, their announced intention was to make “citizen’s arrests” of Democrats attending the convention and to charge them with “crimes against humanity.”

A similarly incompetent demonstration unfolded in the arena while Biden spoke Monday night. A few demonstrators toward the back raised their telltale “Jill” signs — for Stein — and a banner announcing “Stop Arming Israel” in Palestinian colors. Those in front of them blocked the banner with their “We Love Joe” bollard signs until it was removed.

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Outside, a few dozen demonstrators broke off from the main group and, a couple of blocks from the arena, threw water bottles at police while taking down a few sections of the outer perimeter fence. Police quickly seized control without using tear gas, nobody was seriously injured, and police reported a grand total of 13 arrests for the day.

The people in the streets of Chicago this week bear little resemblance to the mass movement of students in the spring that shut down universities. Rather, these are the usual suspects, the sort of far-left groups that have been protesting at Democratic conventions for years on an ever-shifting list of grievances. They were never going to vote Democratic, if they vote at........

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