Letter to a whiny young Democrat

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Here’s a column by SF Gate columnist Mark Morford that really needs to be read by all, particularly those (generally younger) starry-eyed liberals who were first mesmerized by then-Senator Obama’s trailblazing campaign and subsequently turned sourly and moody when the President failed to live up to their ridiculous expectations. It’s witty, eloquent, funny and snarky as hell, and I would love to see this read out loud before a student body assembly at some college, preferably broadcast live on national TV.

Oh, now you've done it.

See? You see what happens when you young liberal voters get so disgruntled and disillusioned that you drop all your party's newborn, hard-won ideas about Hope™ and Change™, without any patience, without really giving them sufficient time to mature, without understanding that hugely foreign, anti-American concept known as "the long view"?

See what happens when you wallow in hollow disappointment, trudging all over your liberal arts campus and refusing to vote in a rather important mid-term election, all because your pet issues and nubile ego weren't immediately serviced by a mesmerizing guy named Barack Obama just after he sucked you into his web of fuzzyhappy promises a mere two years ago, back when you were knee-high to a shiny liberal ideology?

Well, now you know. This is what happens: The U.S. House of Representatives, the most insufferable gaggle of political mongrels this side of, well, the rest of Congress, reverts to GOP control like a brain tumor reverts to a more aggressive form of cancer, and everything gets bleaker and sadder and, frankly, a whole lot nastier.

On the second page (worry not, it’s not that long), he ends with dropping the snark (mostly) and lays it plain and simple:

But here's your big takeaway, young Dem: It ain't over yet. The 2012 election is just around the corner. If we've learned anything, it's that two years whip by insanely quickly. Anything can happen, and usually does. You'll have another chance. And probably another after that. Maybe more.

So here's what you need to know, right now: Barack Obama is, and will continue to be, a bit of goddamn miracle. He's simply as good as we're going get for an articulate, thoughtful, integrity-rich Democratic prez in your lifetime. Period. To hamstring his administration out of spite and laziness is childish and sad. Check the accomplishments. Understand the process. Deal with the messiness.

It will never be perfect. It will never be giddy liberal nirvana, because it doesn't work that way. Politics is corrosive and infuriating, de facto and by definition, even with someone as thoughtful as Obama in the Big Chair. Understand it. Deal with it. Get back in the game. If you don't, we all lose.

I have to take exception with his practically brown-nosed depiction of Obama, whose track record of accomplishments includes some very glaring black stains, at least when it comes to criminal rights, such as the continued denial of basic rights such as habeas corpus to terror suspects. But it is certainly undeniable – at least, to those who actually keep track of such things as what the President does – that President Obama and the Democrats have gotten more done in the past 21 months than many previous administrations combined. The reason why there hasn’t been more done – and also why so few people are even aware of all that’s even been accomplished in the first place – is, as usual, thanks to the attention-whoring antics of the GOP.

So really – and I didn’t think this needed pointing out – when you vote against the Democrats out of mere resentment and disillusionment, you’re voting for the Republicans. That’s as simple as it is. Even if Democrats did let liberals down (and that’s debatable), what sort of logic is it to then blithely turn around and give power to the real two-faced hooligans who are so very often at the root cause of pretty much all that’s wrong the the country in the first place?

(via @ebertchicago)

Tags: Democrats • liberals • Republicans • Mark Morford