The idea that Democrats should stick to "their issues" and on everything else, watch the polls and try to run out in front of the parade is the essence of DLC "centrism." Vietnam may have provided the seed for the Right to paint the Democrats as "weak," but trying to follow public opinion instead of leading it is what cemented the idea.

These people won the presidency with a brilliant candidate, and lost nearly everything else, but the still believe theirs is the way to win.

As Fafnir mentioned, antiabortion rallies have been a huge part of the right-wing movement. I think it would be more appropriate to criticize Democratic leaders' fear of engaging with the protests (as we do with similar failures to effectively oppose the war) than the protests themselves.

On another progressive issue, clearly the mass immigration rallies this year were a major influence on that debate.

I think there's a danger of falling prey to a 9/11 fallacy. 9/11 gave Bush the ability to ignore a lot of restraints with impunity, and to cow his opponents who were in positions of power, but it's a mistake to draw from that the lesson that we've entered some sort of post-modern era where those restraints and influences will never work again. There are a lot of tools that could have been discarded on that basis the past six years.

Rallies primarily support and influence the friends of your cause. When your friends are completely out of power, and in an environment where they are marginalized, no, you're not going to see any immediate results. But in the current environment, I think it's another tool to remind them of who put them there, and that we expect them to use the political power we gave them.

FWIW, ANSWER is not involved in organizing this protest. And I have to dispute your characterization of them -- while they were terrible at focus and embarassing because they were doctrinaire Marxists, they weren't incompetent, they were great at publicity and getting people out. It remains to be seen if the new organization is as effective in that area.

He supports changing the way we fight?  How?  Or is it that he supports changing to win, but won't tell us anything about how until after the election.

Just like Bush...

A not insignificant part of the power of incumbency comes from the expectation of seniority and power (in addition to familiarity.)  The best thing the Senate Democrats could do for the race would be to strip Lieberman of his seniority and publicize it widely, since he's running against the party's candidate.  (They should have done it after the primary -- not much use negotiating with him to drop out if you don't follow through on the threat.)

It may seem risky, but they really have very little to lose.  If Lieberman wins, he's going to squeeze as much out of them as he can in return for only working against the Dems' interests as much as he already did, rather than openly breaking with them, regardless of his "pledge" to caucus with them.

Which makes it even worse.  Lieberman is willing to express a grudge against Gore to right-wingers just for not supporting him in the primary.  What a self-entitled crybaby!

Senator Stevens' telecommunications bill is S. 2686.

savetheinternet.org had some good suggested language for a call, though at present we need to add a request to vote against cloture on the bill as well:

I urge the Senator to protect Net Neutrality, which prevents the largest phone and cable companies from turning the Internet into their private tollway. I urge the Senator to vote NO on Senator Stevens' telecommunications bill (S. 2686) unless real Net Neutrality language is added that prohibits network operators from discriminating against content and creating a tiered Internet.

You still haven't made any suggestion of a context in which the Lieberman endorsement is positive for NARAL's mission.  If the endorsement is unimportant, then not endorsing would at least be unimportant in the right direction.  You express confidence that these groups have a longer-term strategy beyond one election, without hinting at what you think it is, and how it's worth letting an incumbent know that he can stab NARAL in the back on the issue that (according to their fundraising letters) is the most important of this Congress without suffering any consequences.

An argument of "no, you're wrong" is vacuous.  Got anything to back it up?

I disagree; I think it's well worth one phone call to tell Allen's staff that you're not fooled and you know he didn't vote for Net Neutrality.  I think the reason he (reportedly) looked nervous when he was voting was that he knew he was voting against the wishes of many constituents who had cared enough to call.  And not just individual net-heads and people who'd vote against him anyway; when I called I specifically mentioned the importance of Net Neutrality to Internet-based small businesses in Virginia (since I work for one.)

Usually when I write to Allen (which I've only bother to do when he's automatically included in some email campaign), I get a response that says, in essence "you'll be pleased to know I voted for blah blah blah" when I urged him to vote against it.  The fact that he's weaseling so intensely and in such detail on this issue tells me he's actually worried about it.  We need to feed that perception.

I certainly don't think it's likely, but I do think it's possible that when he's just one of a hundred senators on the floor, instead of in the spotlight as the swing vote on a committee, he just might vote the right way.