The Christian Coalition does it on its social agenda. Many people who cannot agree what to do can agree what not to do and thus can be organized more effectively around a negative proposition than a positive one. Progressives face a particularly difficult choice because their adversaries are likely to have more resources to countermobilize than they have to mobilize. This is not to say that reformers should proceed quietly. But they have far more need of defusing the opposition with early compromises than the hard-liners among them typically recognize.
Class interests count.
Politics is still, in the classic phrase, about who gets what, and in the final analysis, class interests played a critical role in who got what in the policy conflicts of the past four years. When the dust cleared in the battle of the budget, the poor were the principal losers. The risk of welfare reform will be borne by poor women and children. After debating what to do for the roughly 40 million uninsured, the Congress did nothing. Instead, it adopted portability provisions that meet the middle-class concerns about keeping coverage between jobs and set up experimental tax shelters that are great for healthy people in higher income brackets.