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Letter to a Whiny Young Democrat

What's Your Reaction:

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-trade and change-and-trade, 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 fuzzy-happy 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.

What happens is this: Many kinds of fragmented, muddled, but still constructive Democratic progress might get stopped quite nearly dead, and even a few pieces of legislation we actually did gain get slapped around, threatened, stomped on the head like a scientist at a Rand Paul rally. Happy now?

Check it out, kiddo: This is not just any Republican party you allowed back into power; these mealy folks are not anything like the war-hungry, Bush-tainted army of flying monkeys and Dick Cheney moose knuckles you so wonderfully helped bury in the history books last election.

No, the GOP of 2010-2011 is even weirder, dumber, less interested in anything you even remotely care about; this GOP is infused like a sour cocktail with a bitter splash of the most cartoonish, climate change-denying Tea Party dingbats imaginable -- most of whom think you're an elitist, terrorist-loving, gay-supporting threat to "real" American values, btw -- all led by a guy named Boehner who wears a bizarre, shellacked tan so fake and creepy it makes Nancy Pelosi looks like a supermodel.

And you made it all happen. Or rather, you failed to prevent it from happening, by not voting, by turning your collective back on Obama's tough love, by getting all whiny and dejected like some sort of sullen teen vampire who can't get laid.

Read the rest of this column here!


Mark Morford is the author of The Daring Spectacle: Adventures in Deviant Journalism, a mega-collection of his finest columns for the SF Chronicle and SFGate. Get it at daringspectacle.com or Amazon. He recently wrote about how to be properly outraged, the trouble with the Arcade Fire, and the wonderful hoax that is global warming. His website is markmorford.com. Join him on Facebook, or email him. Not to mention...

 
 
 

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04:12 PM on 11/15/2010
How is this supposed to help anyone? It just reads like a another politcal rant to me. Can you not see that this is exactly the kind of thing that is stopping any kind of real dialogue? I see your point, but the way it is written... what does it serve - just sounds like another pissed off person adding their two cents and scolding kids who at least got involved more than previous generations. Do you want to bring them along or push them away?
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Bryan Gray
01:25 PM on 11/08/2010
Blame the advisors, blame the previous administration, blame the Repubs, blame the far left, blame the youth, blame anyone but the one who makes the decision. Cop out. Pass the buck.
09:48 PM on 11/07/2010
Unless your essay was completely satirical, you're completely wrong, and disingenuous. People didn't want nirvana or pet issues. They wanted an end to torture and murder. They wanted health care. They wanted bailouts for regular people, not big corporations and bankers. And they wanted backbone.

Obama could have interpreted the elections to mean that he needs to move to the left. He won't. And that's precisely why such weaklings should not be voted for in the first place.

Why, when Democrats win the election, do Republicans call the shots, but when Republicans win the election (even one house), Republicans call the shots?

Because people like you keep insisting that we vote for spineless center-right Democrats.
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tainoaz
01:55 AM on 11/08/2010
Keep Telling It Like It Is Dr. Farley!
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Ben Cohn
12:44 PM on 11/08/2010
You made one great point...."Why, when Democrats win the election, do Republicans call the shots, but when Republicans win the election (even one house), Republicans call the shots?"....Exactly, the Repub claim that Dems should just except losing is such hypocrisy considering what has happened the last two years.
Other than that though you once again prove what is 100% wrong with young Dem voters. You punish the people who agree with you 75% for not going the other 25...and in so doing allow people that agree with you 0% to take power. Also, this contention that Dems would have won if they had done more is simply silly and any real journalist like Fareed Zakaria pointed this out. The moronic Independent's who by the way are statistically most likely to be 30-55, are flip floppers. Yes maybe they would have turned out less, but they weren't going to pull the lever for Sharron Angle because they wanted Obama to be MORE liberal. Common that's just silly and you know it.
Your still living in a dreamworld where a real liberal could get elected. Notice how the right rarely actually puts up someone that is far-right....Bush paid pure lip service to the social issues that matter most to many of them. WHY? Because they know a true conservative could never win. Its time you realized that a true lib could not win currently on the national level, and its time you started acting like a pragmatic adult as opposed to the child who cries at his b-day because he only gets half of what he wants and in so doing ruins the party for everyone.
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02:30 PM on 11/07/2010
And so it continues. the Dems keep turning in upon themselves and fighting. Now we have folks blaming the youth vote, the same vote they lauded back in 2008.
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Twinz48
05:28 PM on 11/07/2010
Make no mistake about this: When the American electorate sees the results of what they just voted for, the youth vote will be back in 2012, their numbers strengthened by millions who were bamboozled into voting for the Teapublicans in 2010. Word!
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01:45 PM on 11/11/2010
Only time will tell.
10:30 AM on 11/07/2010
Wow! How true Mr. Morford. Amazingly funny yet sad and true.
05:40 AM on 11/07/2010
Snarky but true. I'm 43 and I made the effort to get off my butt take 10 minutes and vote (not repub of course). However your lucky if you can get young voters to turn out for presidential elections never mind mid terms. Honestly I blew off a lot of mid term elections in my twenties because I didn't think they were important, I was wrong of course. I don't think a lot of young voters understand that mid term elections are in many ways more important - these are the people who will create our laws and decide your fate locally. Live and learn.
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jsgaetano
Semper Fidelis Tyrannosaurus!
12:33 PM on 11/05/2010
That's not really what happened, though.

The biggest Dem losers were the "Blue Dogs", aka the most conservative Dems in the party.

To me, that sounds like a good thing. No I take that back- it sounds like a GREAT thing. If the DNC won't clear out the ConservaDems, the voters are going to have to do it instead.
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Ben Cohn
01:55 PM on 11/07/2010
Alan Grayson, Russ Feingold...need I really continue? Libs were big losers too...except Barney Frank.
09:51 AM on 11/09/2010
I agree with you, the blue dogs are gone! A good thing. And I believe we are really going to be okay, life is long, sh%t happens, and life goes on. There is a big difference between a quick meal from a microwave, and a Thanksgiving dinner, it takes all day long, but is worth waiting for. If I can wait for Roe V Wade, African Americans can wait for civil rights, ( emancipated in 1865, won the right to vote 100 years later), others are waiting for the right to marry who they love. We need to learn the art of patience, we must not go the way of weak-kneed Democrats in office, if they don't do what you think is the right thing to do, fire them in 2012, and hire other Democrats.If you have a bad love affair, you don't change teams, you keep looking for the right person, who loves you back. Just a little life advice from a 58 yr old grandma By the way, I voted for Prop 19 back in 1972, am srtill waiting
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heroine addict
habitual goddess worship
09:32 AM on 11/05/2010
With all the respect people like this give young voters it's hard to imagine why they are disinfranchised. Would you mock disinfranchised GLBT voters the same way?
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Ben Cohn
01:57 PM on 11/07/2010
We as the youth don't DESERVE respect right now. The author is completely correct. Once again the liberal youth allowed people that agree with them 85% to lose because of the other 15% and in so doing ushered in people who agree with them 0%.

I may respect the ones sides views more, but fundamentally the liberal left and conservative right are the exact same...purely ideologically driven. The difference...the conservative right still votes pragmatically.
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Bryan Gray
12:32 PM on 11/08/2010
speak for yours
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Bryan Gray
12:33 PM on 11/08/2010
speak for yourself
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Harbinger08
You have the right to remain silent
05:56 PM on 11/04/2010
Plenty of whiners on this comments section. Too young to know how hard you sometimes have to fight for change, how long, and how slowly it seems to come. Think about the civil rights movement, or woman's rights, you have no clue as to how long it took to effect change. No wonder more experienced progressives think you whine like babies after it wasn't all dumped in your laps after you worked so hard on one campaign for two or three months. Or you were going to, but were kinda busy in '08. Thanks for nothing. Grow up or go home.
07:43 PM on 11/05/2010
nicely said.
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mrpotatohead
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09:46 PM on 11/08/2010
I wouldn't consider that "nicely said."

It seems to me if we want any group to get involved it might be best if we first take responsibility for our own role in letting things get this far. Then, we might want to try something other than leading with "whiny Democrat," regardless of the degree to which the description is true.

It also doesn't help to lead with "Plenty of whiners" in the first sentence then "Thanks for nothing" whining at the end.
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Harbinger08
You have the right to remain silent
11:15 AM on 11/09/2010
Change is hard. There are powerful people working very hard to oppose it. Suck it up. You added nothing other than to suggest we need to baby the whiners. Great solution. You're right, might as well give up because some people didn't get everything they were promised. Best thing to do is not vote and lose what gains we made because you didn't get your way all in one go.
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04:29 PM on 11/04/2010
Young folk are fickle. You don't say?
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Jason N
Proud Firebagger Lefty
03:05 PM on 11/04/2010
And the blame game continues... gays, the young, black people... yeah blame the voters. Brilliant strategy! Couldn't possibly have anything to do with the Democratic party abandoning their principles whenever the GOP said "fil..." Keep thinking it's just the dumb voters who didn't get it. Maybe one day you and the Democratic leadership will get it.
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Milash
It says I should edit my micro-bio, so I did.
05:09 PM on 11/04/2010
Either that or he's right. Anyone who votes republican is obviously a mascochist missed the pain and tortue the republicans so generously dole out.
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02:33 PM on 11/07/2010
Or perhaps he's not right and there was a tone deafness from the top that didnt want to listen to boots on the ground. Biggest majority in decades and they had zero spine in the halls of congress.

But I guess its easier to blame the youth who dont have a single voice then look at the people at the top who drove the poltic car right off the cliff instead of guiding it right.
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Ben Cohn
01:59 PM on 11/07/2010
You can't argue FACTS...the youth went from 18% of the electorate to 11% while people over 65 went from 16% to 25%. There aren't that many less young people and that many more old people. In fact, initial exit polls show that the number of over 65 who voted was actually very close in terms of total numbers, they just represented a larger percentage this time.
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CMB1969
raging moderate
02:53 PM on 11/04/2010
Funny. Of course the other part of the equation for why young liberals of the sort who gave Obama his momentum in 2008 did keep the House out of Republican hands is that upon graduation, they all took their philosophy BA degrees and moved to big cities like San Francisco, Boston, New York to live with three roommates in concentrated in urban congressional districts that are so liberal that the Green Party actually manages to outpoll the Republicans. Meanwhile, the young republican guy down the hall who majored in marketing got a job for a company in Little Rock, AR, moved into a garden apartment complex in the suburbs, and (with the moderate Democrat who held that district for the past 20 years) helped provide the 55% margin that elected a Republican to the local House seat.
05:50 PM on 11/04/2010
huh?
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Russell Masingale
weary I am of the Astroturf.
07:44 AM on 11/05/2010
i think he is trying to make liberals out to be wine and coke snorting elitests and show how good old john q conservative is out in the world making real change happen. but he failed in that the republican guy dow the hall works for goldline and is busy swindling you grandma out of her retirement for fun.
garystartswithg
el sueno de la razon produce republicans
11:30 AM on 11/05/2010
Its good to know people who make phone calls for debt collectors love their life in Little Rock!
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Gretchen Watson
By the way, that dress you are wearing is green.
02:23 PM on 11/04/2010
Tell it!
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WoodsideCraig
Author of the blog "The Weiler Psi"
12:12 PM on 11/04/2010
The dems caved to lobbyists with healthcare reform, financial reform, big oil reform, climate reform and on down the list. The two useless wars have not ended and the economy has not improved.

Obama has made a little headway on the international front, and that is about all that has matched expectations.

What will happen now? Gridlock. Nothing gets done. I expected the Dems to make things happen with control of both houses and the presidency and they didn't. They failed miserably to make any real headway and the only winners were the lobbyists.

Maybe the whole nation will need 50 years of Republican idiocy, mismanagement and economic catastrophe before things change. I don't know.
07:48 PM on 11/05/2010
Were you expecting everything to change in 2 years? And things did happen with the Dems in power - not as much as we would have liked, but again real long lasting change doesn't happen overnight - ask any recovering alcoholic or drug addict.

Change and progress was being made and now we will be pushed back further beyond our 1/20/2009 starting point.
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mrpotatohead
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09:52 PM on 11/08/2010
Most economists would disagree with your economic analysis. Bush and Obama's strategies weren't significantly different in regard to the economy.

Like the Tea Baggers, we need to stop looking for either party to solve the problems and start getting all up in their face.
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11:26 AM on 11/04/2010
This is what happens when you tap into the hope and idealism of young people, then immediately turn your back on the principles that got you their support. The young found out they had been had, and I doubt many of them will ever get excited about another politician again. Way to squander your future Dems.
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mrpotatohead
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09:53 PM on 11/08/2010
There is some truth to that. They failed to leverage the work of the Presidential campaign. However, it's also been the pattern that these same groups have lower turnout for the mid-term elections.