Back in the early 1990s, the right-wing taste of the year was Newt Gingrich. He led the Republican sweep into Congress in the 1994 midterm elections. His "Contract With America" loomed in every headline. Liberals wailed that Gingrichism was invincible.

The counterattack began right in Gingrich's front yard, in Georgia. The Atlanta Central Labor Council and Jobs With Justice staged a noisy sit-in in Gingrich's local Congressional office and seized the headlines with stinging descriptions of the Contract as a cruel assault on the poor and the working class. For months, groups of union workers dogged the Congressman at his every stop across the country. This noisy guerrilla warfare rallied the fainthearted and threw Gingrich, then Speaker of the House, off balance. By 1995 a rattled Gingrich had lost his touch, faltering badly in the famous budget face-off with Clinton.

In the 2000 Democratic primary campaign the AIDS coalition ACT UP (involved in the earlier Gingrich protests) adopted the same tactic against Al Gore, showing up wherever he made public appearances and shouting out protests at the rotten AIDS policies he'd signed on to. There weren't always many protesters, but they were always there, and they had an effect. Gore changed his line, and so did the Clinton Administration.

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