Laura Dean is a freelance journalist living and working in Egypt and sometimes other parts of the Middle East and North Africa. She grew up in Bahrain and graduated from the University of Chicago. Previously, she worked as an election observer with the Carter Center in Tunisia and Libya and served on the staff of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in Washington, DC.
Over the last week, she's posted a dairy of events in Egypt:

Cairo Diary, June 30: An Introduction and the Scene at Tahrir

Cairo Diary, July 1: The Day After Tamarod

Cairo Diary, July 2: Brotherhood and Defiance

Cairo Diary, July 3: Praying We Don’t Get Fooled Again

Cairo Diary, July 4: The First Day of the Rest of Egypt’s Life

Cairo Diary, July 5: “Friday of Rejection”—and Violence

Cairo Diary, July 6: A New Prime Minister, Maybe

Cairo Diary, July 7: An Outside Perspective

From the 6 Jul piece, (IMO) an astute observation:

During the Parliamentary elections in 2011, I worked as an election observer in the Northern governorate of Beheira and Marsa Matrouh on the Libyan border. In both places, I visited many small towns and hamlets. The only political parties I saw with any consistency there were the Freedom and Justice Party (the Muslim Brotherhood’s political arm) and the Salafi Noor Party. They had the numbers, they were on the streets. At the time, those who later came to become the opposition said the Islamists had an unfair advantage: they had been organized for years, these people said; they had existing charity networks; they had money that allowed them to set up cheap markets to sell meat and other staples at cut rates; they had a natural networks in their mosques, many of which encouraged their congregations to vote for Islamic parties.

The answer, then as now, is suck it up: if the opposition wants to get through to people in a meaningful way, they too must go to the villages and organize.
Regards

Mike