The lack of voter and media interest in Election 2002 is astonishing. Or not. Redistricting has reduced even further the number of parts of the country experiencing competitive Congressional races. Here in Washington state, not one of the nine Congressional incumbents has a tough challenge this year, and that's not unusual; fewer than ten percent of Congressional districts nationally have such a race. Moreover, the lack of spirited challenge by Democrats to much of Dubya's agenda--from tax cuts for the wealthy to 9/11--inspired war and attacks on civil liberties--has redoubled many people's inclination to tune politics out. If there's no perceived choice in who represents you, why bother?

The stakes of this week's election and the battle for control of the Senate have been enormous--not just for Americans, but for all those around the world whose fates are determined by DC politicians. The rest of the world's citizens have even less control over America's political leaders than we do.

At the same time, the insufferable smugness of some still-bitter-at-Ralph Democrats is getting old. "Never, ever again say that there's no difference between the parties!," goes the refrain, simultaneously managing to both misstate many peoples' concerns about the two parties two years ago (and today), and then failing to disprove even that misstated thesis.

For the record, the more nuanced version of the Naderite tweedledum & dee argument went that the two major parties had their differences, but that those differences were a wash, particularly because Democrats could be expected to oppose Republicans' bad ideas, but Republicans would happily sign off on Democratic ones (e.g., the dismantling of welfare).

What has happened in the last two years to "prove" that Republicans are so much more awful than Democrats? Beyond the fact that the crowd Bush has surrounded himself with is every bit as repugnant as anyone expected--worse, even--two unexpected things happened. One was the tremendous political opening caused by 9/11, giving Dubya cabal cover to push through a whole range of policies that people like Donald Rumsfeld and John Ashcroft had dreamed of for years. The second unexpected factor was the near-total cravenness of most Democratic officials--particularly the Congressional leadership, which from the moment of Al Gore's failure to champion disenfranchised Florida voters (and muzzling of Jesse Jackson when Jackson tried it) has embraced a strategy of appeasement.

It's not entirely clear that post-9/11 foreign policy under Al Gore, Joseph Lieberman, Brent Scowcroft, and the gang would have been a whole lot different than that of the Bush crowd; the Taliban would have been rousted in about the same way, and Israel would have had just as blank a check, Both of these politics would have inspired further anti-American terrorism in exactly the way Bush has. But that's hypothetical. What is uncontestable is that much of this year's electoral ennui came from the Democratic strategy of rolling over, leaving much of what was once the Democrats' usual base of support distinctly unrepresented in Washington.

But that's changing. The recent flood of public lobbying of Capitol Hill against invasion of Iraq was the first sign in two years of real, focused opposition to the Bush agenda. It came despite the Democrats, only a couple dozen of whom were likely to oppose such resolutions in August. But by last month, over 100 did so, and the number would have climbed with each passing week.

Even more significant than the public anger over Iraq was how it happened. Liberal and progressive opposition to the war was not championed by any major political leader from either party; it was not the focus of any ongoing media coverage, and was not prompted by any NRA-style lobbying campaign by any single group. What happened was the Internet. And beyond the flood of e-mails, there was hope--a new strategy, proving that such a public surge could be tied directly to both the electoral fortune and the voting behavior of individual Democrats. There was MoveOn.org.

MoveOn.org is an Internet-based advocacy group, with an affiliated political action committee, designed to help Democrats. It was launched four years ago, the brainchild of two Silicon Valley entrepreneurs disgusted with Republican attempts to nail Bill Clinton on the Monica Lewinsky affair. (Hence, the name.) It describes its work as "building electronic advocacy groups."

MoveOn.org's initial campaign opposing impeachment generated 250,000 phone calls and over a million e-mails to Congress. But far from being a one-issue response, the group has built from and learned from its successive campaigns. Over the past four years, MoveOn.org has separated itself from the legions of e-lists and web-based political fundraisers by being very selective about the issues it has taken on, and very strategic about targeting individual politicians for support--and allowing subscribers to choose which, among those politicians, subscribers wish to donate to.

The result was that when the vote on an invasion of Iraq came to Congress, MoveOn.org was one of the groups best-positioned to mobilize a large number of people to generate targeted mailings and phone calls. However, the crucial further step came next--after the vote, when MoveOn.org identified a group of key Democratic "no" votes cast by representatives facing tough re- election fights. MoveOn.org sent out a notice to subscribers urging that they support the courageous stance taken by these officials.

Congress approved the Iraq resolutions on October 10. By October 22, MoveOn.org had raised an astonishing $1.4 million from over 30,000 individual donors--$400,000 of it in the first 24 hours of its campaign. In 2000, MoveOn.org had managed to raise $1.7 million for 29 Democratic candidates who had fought impeachment--a then-impressive figure for an Internet-based PAC organized on an issue that had already faded from the headlines. To nearly match that total in a matter of days is a development few on Capitol Hill will ignore. It shows both how far MoveOn.org has come in the past two years, and the enormous future potential of getting Internet activists to not only contact members of Congress, but also pull out their checkbooks and debit cards in numbers large enough to influence an election.

It's a route by which the vast, disenfranchised majority of voters, none of us individually wealthy enough to purchase our elected officials' ears, can collectively make ourselves heard in Washington.

At present, MoveOn.org claims over 600,000 subscribers. It is by far the largest of the new Internet-based PACs, and because it has now established itself through three election cycles, its judgment as to which candidates merit support on specific issues (like stopping an invasion of Iraq) carries credibility for a lot of people willing to donate time and money. It enables progressives to support more principled Democrats without going through the party of Gore and Lieberman.

All this is not a substitute for other forms of organizing, of course, even other forms of electoral organizing. Christian conservatives are still reaping rewards from organizing groundwork laid 20 years ago, and a similar long-term strategy will be needed if there is any hope of getting Democratic caucuses on Capitol Hill and state legislatures to the point where they will provide consistent, principled opposition to the George Bushes of the world.

But the mechanism is in place, an effective one, and its means are consistent with its ends: a grass roots movement that promotes greater democracy by giving ordinary citizens a say in not just their own uncontested districts, but in races all over the country. And the same mechanism could be used to build third parties like the Greens, too.

Much of the American electorate is not politically apathetic so much as despairing of any opportunity to make ourselves heard. The lesson of this month's anti-war lobbying, and of the work of MoveOn.org, is that it can be done, and done effectively. All we need to do is vote. And click.