Those liberal organizations that already knew how to do politics -- the AFL-CIO, the League of Conservation Voters (LCV) and a few others -- are doing it better than they have before. Those liberal groups that stayed aloof from elections or phumphered ineffectually are now playing the game like seasoned pros. New organizations have arisen to mobilize sometime voters; the largest of them -- America Coming Together (ACT) -- will have 12,000 staffers in each of the three biggest battleground states (Pennsylvania, Ohio and Florida) on Election Day.

And most amazingly, all the 527s -- ACT, the AFL-CIO, the LCV, the Sierra Club, the NAACP, Emily's List, MoveOn and 25 others -- are working together under the umbrella of a single coalition, America Votes. They meet together, plan together, divvy up turf, parcel out messages, coordinate their mailing and phone banking.(...)

The Democrats will have lots of people -- party people, 527 people -- getting out their vote in Ohio on Election Day. Putting together the estimates of the various party and non-party groups, I got a total of somewhere between 40,000 and 50,000. For a state of 10 million, with a potential electorate of 5 million, having 50,000 people to get those Kerry voters who need an extra zetz to the polls is nothing short of astounding. Partly due to these groups' efforts, Kerry has already pulled ahead in Ohio, and I'm confident he'll take the state next Tuesday.(...)

If John Kerry is elected next Tuesday, the tsunami of volunteer activity within the independent groups will be in large part responsible. Whether this tsunami can be bottled -- whether this coalition will take on a permanent life of its own, become an enduring progressive presence in American politics -- is a question of resources, opportunity, Zeitgeist and even law (the legal status of the 527s may be under attack if Bush wins). But the leaders of progressive organizations, Democratic elected officials, and the hundreds of thousands of phone bankers and precinct walkers, each for their own reasons, want the outpouring of 2004 to become a fixture of American politics. "Progressives have been waiting for decades for a citizen-based movement to happen," says Ed Cyr. "One that's independent of the party, that's integrated, that's effective."

"This is it," says Cyr. "It's happened."