As it turns out, the answer is "no"
I sent this letter to newly-promoted Speaker of the House Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Reid back in 2006. I was 20.
An Open Letter to the Democratic Congress
Winning is a funny thing, and not one that I’m used to. Although I lived through the Clinton era, the twelve years that Republicans have dominated Congress are what I really remember. The last time Democrats had control of either floor, I was eight years old, and not paying attention.
Thanks to my family, community, and friends, I was raised a Democrat. I marched for Choice. I held sit-ins against the war in my high school. I mourned for my country, for the inability of ‘my party’ to do anything… because you were the minority, because your hands were tied. You were the losing side. You were the underdogs, unable to so much as block much of the awful legislation coming through, much less pass any of your own, but I supported you anyway.
Of course, it was never as simple as not being able to stop things from happening. Certain memorable votes stick in my mind, where shocking majorities of you joined Republicans in allowing terrible things to happen… the inception of the PATRIOT Act, war powers for the president… I asked myself, “Even if your voting in opposition would have made no difference, shouldn’t you have done it anyway?”
I also keenly remember the first time I was old enough to vote - it wasn’t so long ago, in 2004. I followed local and national races, and when the time came to vote, I was so proud to become a voting citizen. At the same time, I was heartbroken at the Democrats’ inability to produce a candidate who would distance himself from Bush on a meaningful level, and their determination to marginalize the only candidates who dared speak truth to power - Kucinich, for example. But, being a good little Democratic eighteen-year-old, I held my nose and voted for Kerry, even though voting for an alternative party, like the Greens, would have made no difference at all - I live in Oregon, where thus far fraud is minimal and Democratic nominees for president win by an overwhelming margin. Perhaps you and I are not so different, in our voting habits… but we should be, and that brings me to my point.
I am a member of a generation that you, the Democrats, have DESPERATELY cultivated through voter registration drives and commercial campaigns. More of us come of age and vote for you every day. We are, on the whole dissatisfied with the current state of affairs in America and abroad. And none of us ever remember you in power. We were told, “If the Democrats win, things will finally be set right,” but you never won.
Our childhood was full of the Lewinsky scandal, Enron, and Afghanistan, of political humor and horror, an economic boom and bust, and a war that our friends have gone off and died in, for nothing. We are immigrants, teenage parents and teenagers who chose not to be parents when the choice came along, we are poor, or we were born wealthy, we are in school accruing debt or desperately trying to get into an economy where most jobs for people our age are in the service industry. Few of us were old enough to vote during 9-11, but we all remember it, and many of us recognize the atrocities that have been committed in the name of the people that died there, and we do not approve. We have studied history in our suffering, underfunded public schools, and we remember the lecture on the Reichstag fire.
This is the environment that we have grown up in, and it has lacked a single notable progressive result from you guys, since you’ve never won in OUR living memory. Even so, we’ve supported you, waiting patiently for this day to come.
Today, we, the young Democrats who have never seen the Democrats in power, are winners for the very first time. We have pretty high expectations for you guys.
If you squander this opportunity, allow yourself to be corrupted by power or coopted by so-called ‘bipartisanism,’ or wallow in scandal while refusing to pursue the astonishing illegalities perpetrated every day on Capital Hill by the President and his party, if you end your two years so discredited by your ineffectiveness that the Republicans sweep everything in 2008, and you let them fraud yet another election because you don’t reform voting measures by then on a national scale…
If you fail, after we’ve blindly spent our entire lives rooting for you, rallying for you, and voting for you…
Will we ever trust you again?
I suspected something foul was in the works, what with six years of complicity with the Bush administration, but I never, in my wildest dreams, imagined the damage the Democrats/Republicans/Corporations/Rich could inflict upon America with the man called Obama.
Six years later, my question is answered with a reality worse than my 20-year-old worst case scenario.
*sigh*
An Open Letter to the Democratic Congress
Winning is a funny thing, and not one that I’m used to. Although I lived through the Clinton era, the twelve years that Republicans have dominated Congress are what I really remember. The last time Democrats had control of either floor, I was eight years old, and not paying attention.
Thanks to my family, community, and friends, I was raised a Democrat. I marched for Choice. I held sit-ins against the war in my high school. I mourned for my country, for the inability of ‘my party’ to do anything… because you were the minority, because your hands were tied. You were the losing side. You were the underdogs, unable to so much as block much of the awful legislation coming through, much less pass any of your own, but I supported you anyway.
Of course, it was never as simple as not being able to stop things from happening. Certain memorable votes stick in my mind, where shocking majorities of you joined Republicans in allowing terrible things to happen… the inception of the PATRIOT Act, war powers for the president… I asked myself, “Even if your voting in opposition would have made no difference, shouldn’t you have done it anyway?”
I also keenly remember the first time I was old enough to vote - it wasn’t so long ago, in 2004. I followed local and national races, and when the time came to vote, I was so proud to become a voting citizen. At the same time, I was heartbroken at the Democrats’ inability to produce a candidate who would distance himself from Bush on a meaningful level, and their determination to marginalize the only candidates who dared speak truth to power - Kucinich, for example. But, being a good little Democratic eighteen-year-old, I held my nose and voted for Kerry, even though voting for an alternative party, like the Greens, would have made no difference at all - I live in Oregon, where thus far fraud is minimal and Democratic nominees for president win by an overwhelming margin. Perhaps you and I are not so different, in our voting habits… but we should be, and that brings me to my point.
I am a member of a generation that you, the Democrats, have DESPERATELY cultivated through voter registration drives and commercial campaigns. More of us come of age and vote for you every day. We are, on the whole dissatisfied with the current state of affairs in America and abroad. And none of us ever remember you in power. We were told, “If the Democrats win, things will finally be set right,” but you never won.
Our childhood was full of the Lewinsky scandal, Enron, and Afghanistan, of political humor and horror, an economic boom and bust, and a war that our friends have gone off and died in, for nothing. We are immigrants, teenage parents and teenagers who chose not to be parents when the choice came along, we are poor, or we were born wealthy, we are in school accruing debt or desperately trying to get into an economy where most jobs for people our age are in the service industry. Few of us were old enough to vote during 9-11, but we all remember it, and many of us recognize the atrocities that have been committed in the name of the people that died there, and we do not approve. We have studied history in our suffering, underfunded public schools, and we remember the lecture on the Reichstag fire.
This is the environment that we have grown up in, and it has lacked a single notable progressive result from you guys, since you’ve never won in OUR living memory. Even so, we’ve supported you, waiting patiently for this day to come.
Today, we, the young Democrats who have never seen the Democrats in power, are winners for the very first time. We have pretty high expectations for you guys.
If you squander this opportunity, allow yourself to be corrupted by power or coopted by so-called ‘bipartisanism,’ or wallow in scandal while refusing to pursue the astonishing illegalities perpetrated every day on Capital Hill by the President and his party, if you end your two years so discredited by your ineffectiveness that the Republicans sweep everything in 2008, and you let them fraud yet another election because you don’t reform voting measures by then on a national scale…
If you fail, after we’ve blindly spent our entire lives rooting for you, rallying for you, and voting for you…
Will we ever trust you again?
I suspected something foul was in the works, what with six years of complicity with the Bush administration, but I never, in my wildest dreams, imagined the damage the Democrats/Republicans/Corporations/Rich could inflict upon America with the man called Obama.
Six years later, my question is answered with a reality worse than my 20-year-old worst case scenario.
*sigh*