...than this, Al.  I've been reading you for months now (though only lurking) and this may just be the most insightful and lucid post of yours yet (IMHO).

I think it's very easy to get caught up in the politicking of election season and to take your eyes off the prize.  It's easy for people to swoon and faint and get the vapors with every utterance a candidate makes, attempting to read the tea leaves and prognosticate about what Candidate X's aside to a staffer in earshot of a reporter means about his policy on Y during a lunar eclipse in a leap year.  You hit the nail on the head here about what it will really take to shift public opinion and actually have the leverage to bring about the kinds of change we all care about--smart dissent and a pragmatic approach to getting the American people involved.

Thanks for a cogent and very persuasive expression of an argument I've been having with some of my more ideological-purity-obsessed friends lately.  Now back to trying to talk them down off their ledges...