The point Kos and others around here are missing about advocacy groups like NARAL is all the work they do. And even if you get a Democratic congress, these groups will remain vital. Take two examples: Sierra Club and Human Rights Watch (HRW).
Case One: the NYC lead paint law
New York has a strong lead paint law, and no thanks to the City Council which is too beholden to developers. The lead paint law is the result of advocacy groups - particularly the Sierra Club, NYPIRG, and MFY Legal Services (disclosure: I was a legal intern at MFY during this particular fight).
The lead paint law was designed by the Sierra Club and NYPIRG. Both have the scientific and legal resources to do this competently. The law was shopped to the Democratic-dominated New York City Council. The council was not interested because developers hated the tougher law - remember these are Democratic council-people we are talking about.
So Sierra, NYPIRG, and MFY had to sue to get the data from the health department to determine where the majority of lead-paint poisonings occurred. No politician wanted this data to be available. Then Sierra and NYPIRG went to the council-people whose districts suffered the most, and "gently" reminded them that the majority of their constituency were (a) in danger of lead poinsoning and (b) not developers.
The law passed, Blooberg vetoed, and the Council passed the law over the veto. And then the developers sued to overturn the law.
Wonder of wonders, Bloomberg then determined that the City Law Department (who would ordinarily defend the law) was a fiefdom of the mayor. Bloomberg forbade the Law Department from defending the Law. The Democratic Council bitched a little, but did nothing. Enter MFY Legal who with NYPIRG defended the city's law.
Note who did all of the work here - the advocacy groups. From soup to nuts, no less. They drafted the legislation, shamed the council into passing the legislation, and then defended the legislation.
I like DailyKos and MoveOn and all these "movement builder" groups. But they cannot provide the scientific and legal resources to do this sort of work.
Case Two: Human Rights Abuses
I don't see too many articles or diaries on the sham demobilization of Colombian paramilitaries or the ongoing troubles in Uzbekistan. But HRW has people on the ground in those countries - people collecting data and interviewing victims and perpetrators.
Can DailyKos or MoveOn.org - the "movement builders" - get its members to hit the ground in these places to get first hand evidence of what is going on. How many Kossacks will answer the call if Kos himself calls for volunteers to do this work. And how many of those would actually know what they are doing?
Conclusion:
I like DailyKos and movement builder type organizations, but they cannot do everything. Advocacy groups are always needed - even (and especially) when the Dems are in power. Movement builder organizations lack the resources and expertise to draft legislation, to provide scientific or legal support, or to monitor governmental activities. This is why we need the Sierra Club, HRW, NARAL, etc.
Kos, please stop your jihad against these groups. You are incapable of replacing them. Even if you wanted to marshall the Kossacks to do the jobns they do, you will fail. You need to be a bit more of a cheerleader here. Stick with making the yuk-yuks on your website, and leave the heavy lifting to us.