It Gets Worse

I know how you feel. I've been in your shoes. You're a young liberal who's having a very tough time.

You feel like no one understand you -- no one is on your side. Everyone's the same -- everyone's just in the pockets of the big businesses that are constantly shoving this country's face in the mud.

You feel lost, hopeless. You may not follow politics super-closely, but you've heard from some friends or Web sites about terrible things that both sides are doing. Obama has killed innocent people in drone strikes. No one's figuring out how to get you a decent job. Your student loans keep looking more insurmountable.

When I was your age, in the year 2000, I felt the exact same way. Bush and Gore seemed about the same. Both seemed like the same old politicians, making vague promises and then just going back to the corporate overlords.

I felt so ignored and alone that I wanted to lash out. I wanted to not vote at all. Or maybe vote for Ralph Nader. That would show them. Then they'd listen to me. After all, how could it get any worse?

Well, I'm here to tell you today: It gets worse. Much worse. I resisted the urge to vote for Ralph Nader, but many of my friends didn't. And Bush won Florida by 500 votes, while Ralph Nader got 97,000 in the state. Bush became president.

And it got worse. A lot worse. We went from a strong economy to castle built on the sand, with the middle-class foundation being continually chipped away to provide more money for the wealthy. Bush even passed huge tax cuts for the rich so they could go buy complex securities like "collateralized debt obligations" and "credit default swaps": basically just bets among other wealthy people that not only didn't allow any money to trickle down -- they also caused a major financial collapse.

We went from safe and secure, without a major conflict in decades, to paralyzed with fear, as the Bush administration ignored repeated warnings and allowed al-Qaeda to kill thousands on 9/11. Then we went from the most respected nation in the world to the least respected as Bush wildly overreacted, invading an Iraqi regime that had nothing to do with the attacks.

As for the environment ... euch. Let's just say that if Gore were elected, we would at least be doing something to prevent our country from becoming a desert in a few decades.

My point is that Democrats may seem terrible on a lot of issues. But Republicans are even worse. And if you think things are bad now, just wait. Let Republicans get back in power. Things will get much, much worse. I know, because it happened to me.