So, Democrats have won control of Congress, with a big assist from their energized, populist base. Progressives, especially in the House, now hold unprecedented positions of power. Progressives helped launch and provided much of the muscle behind the Democrats' grassroots surge this year.

So what should we do now, to try to ensure that Democrats don't compromise away their core values, to ensure that the priorities of a solid majority of Americans are acted upon: getting troops out of Iraq, revamping our horrific health care delivery system, restoring progressive taxation, and much more?

The answer, at least for the moment, does not lie in the 2008 presidential race. Amazingly, with Russ Feingold's decision last week not to run, progressives have no horse in the crowded 2008 Democratic presidential field. From frontrunners Hillary Clinton and the buzz-heavy Barack Obama, to prospective candidates like Biden, Edwards, and Clark, through long shots like Vilsack and Bayh, each of these would-be presidents has a record as a party moderate.

Chances are that, as with Howard Dean in 2003, at least one will retool himself next year as a populist. Al Gore--who still insists he's not a candidate--has already been doing so; more quietly, so has Gen. Wesley Clark. But Clark, in a more just world, would have been tried for war crimes by now, given his roles in Panama, Haiti, and especially the Balkans. Gore is the same man who picked Joe Lieberman as a running mate in 2000 and who had such a conservative record as a legislator and vice president that progressives rallied behind Ralph Nader instead. This way lies progressivism--not.

So, then, what? I see three broad areas that activists and organizers who care about two-party electoral politics should be focusing on in the next year. Two involve Congress; one, the most important, does not.

First, Democrats entering and returning to Congress need pressure to do the right things--a lot of pressure. The Beltway urge will be ferocious to listen to lobbyists, to curry favor with corporate donors, and to cut deals with Republican lawmakers that water down bills. It must be countered by the same sort of grassroots demand for accountability that led to this year's electoral tsunami.

Speaking of accountability: impeachment, however richly deserved, is for any number of reasons a political non-starter. Investigations, however, are not, and the past six years of corruption, cronyism, capriciousness, incompetence, and crimes against the Constitution and humanity must be investigated by the newly Democratic-run committees. If nothing else, the likely revelations of D.C. stench such probes will uncover will help frame the 2008 elections, and perhaps excise a few more parasites from the body politic. And those committees, charged with oversight of the Executive Branch, can do a lot to mitigate the ravenous-fox-in-henhouse nature of many of George W. Bush's regulatory agencies. Learn which committees and subcommittees your local legislators chair or are members of, and pressure them to ensure that the agencies they oversee are performing as they were originally intended to perform.

More broadly, Democrats need to be proactive, not merely critical of Republicans or the Bush administration. The legislative priorities Democrats have announced so far--raising the minimum wage, allowing Medicare to negotiate prescription drug prices, abolishing the alternative minimum tax, holding hearings on how the Iraq war has been run--are popular and low-risk. But particularly in the House, where Democrats now have a greater majority than Republicans ever had since 1994, they need to go farther: pressuring Bush (through appropriations) to pull out of Iraq, ending Bush's tax cuts for the rich, fundamental fixes to health care and education, real electoral reform and crackdowns on corporate and congressional corruption, and so on. That will only happen with widespread, coordinated public pressure.

The second area in which progressive activists should pay attention to Congress is the 2008 election. There's not much of interest so far at the top of the ticket, but at the legislative level many freshmen incumbents will be vulnerable to challenge in 2008, and in many other seats Democrats will have pickup opportunities. Activists and organizers should be thinking now about what did and didn't work in 2006, how the netroots and other grassroots mechanisms can mature their fundraising abilities, and, especially, which strong progressives can be recruited to run in 2008.

A number of the newly elected Democrats are from the moderate wing of the party, simply because that's who was recruited to run by the DCCC for this year. With newly demonstrated power to both raise money and turn out votes, activists within the Democratic Party are now in a far better position to recruit their own strong candidates to challenge for party nominations and available seats. That includes challenging Democratic incumbents who don't uphold the values of their district's or state's voters. It also includes recruiting candidates for governorships, state legislative seats, and other lower level offices.

Lastly, and most importantly, progressives who want to capitalize on the success of this year's elections should be looking not only at Congress, but themselves and their own communities. All the grassroots e-mails, letters, phone calls, and congressional office visits in the world won't sway a reluctant legislator unless they are convinced that there is real public sentiment and a movement behind it. We need to organize, organize, organize, in our own communities and across the country. In collective action there is not just moral and social support, but power.

This is especially true with the war in Iraq, where neither party is especially interested in acknowledging either US (or Iraqi) public sentiment or the reality on the ground. While Iraq vets and military families and student counter-recruitment movements have been visible and effective, no real broader movement against the war now exists--certainly not of the scale that would reflect what polls tell us the public is feeling about the war. Turning that broad sentiment into a powerful political force between elections would change debate around the war quite a bit. There is some sentiment in Congress for a different debate on Iraq--but only if the public demands it. That pressure must begin at home and on the streets, not in the Beltway.

The same is true of any number of other issues: health care, education, immigration, free trade, environmental protection, election reform. The list is nearly endless. Local organizing and national networking create the conditions in which change occurs. The great environmentalist David Brower once advised, "Don't expect politicians, even the good ones, to do your job for you. Politicians are like weather vanes. Our job is to make the wind blow." He was right.

No one person can do all of the above activities. That's not the point. The point is to do something. Pick the piece(s) that fit your life and available time, your skills, and your passion, be fearless, and act.

Without your help, the Democrats in Congress won't be much better than the Republicans. But with your help, the changes we saw on Nov. 7 can be just the beginning.