Make No Mistake, We Liberals Will Squander Our Hard-Won Gains

This moment matters. It will be written into Wikipedia history by us, the liberals, because we write and edit socialist encyclopedias. Don’t call it a blue wave. Call it a cerulean splash. Serve it as a high-priced drink. Because such is the cost of delicious progress.

The Democrats stand for truth. Our specific truth that tells a story of diversity, inclusion, women’s rights, and not locking children up in cages, which, by the way, is still happening — good God, will someone make it stop… oh fuck we have to fix this mess now don’t we?

For us, it’s not us versus them, it’s us and them. Not he or she but sheit. And hethem. The Democrats are the last answer on mankind’s multiple-choice test, D: all of the above. When you don’t know the answer, always choose D.

We’re going to ride our cerulean splash to 2020, and we’re going to ride it straight into the ground.

That’s right. We’re going to take this moment by the horns and settle.

You’ll still be scream-crying on Twitter for the next infinite news cycles because we’re going to settle so fucking hard on so many issues.

Why?

We’re the Philadelphia sports franchises of politics. We get super close to winning but always find a way to come up short. But then sometimes we do win! So you start thinking, “Hey, maybe they really are good. Maybe this will be our year! It happened before!” But watch us on the field. We’re so focused on the ball, occasionally we drop it. For years and years. There goes that sports metaphor bounding downfield, past the player taking a knee whom we unequivocally support.

People say we’re too nice. We like happy mediums. We write essays about happy mediums for free on Medium. A happy medium is like a gluten-free donut. Of which we invented. You’re welcome?

Those same hard-hearted people think compromise is bad. Trolls on 4chan might float a conspiracy theory about the word compromise being a portmanteau of “commie promise.” Suddenly our commie promises are being discussed on Fox & Friends. And then we’re defending universal health care, the alternative being citizens coughing zombie virus on each other as the Earth burns up.

Apparently, commonsense policies are too much to ask. So we meet with those across the aisle. We get a little clean coal on our hands. We do some handwringing because All Things Considered told us that might take the clean coal off. The ball slips out again, another entertaining magazine folds, and it’s all our fault.

But this time, we’ll own the libs by owning up to our own failures.

We’ll squander opportunities left, right, and center-left, the last of which is dying like the middle class. But we’ll squander them in our way. Without guns or Russians or tax evasion, but with the progress that comes from living on top of each other in expensive cities.

We. 👏Will. 👏Squander. 👏Opportunities.👏 With. 👏Clap. 👏Emojis. 👏In-Between.👏

This time, when they say we’re the ones who messed things up, we’ll say we know. No apologies. Not saying sorry is the hardest thing for us to do but we’re going to do it even though it gives us insomnia.

We’ll continue happily undermining ourselves until the next Presidential race, which will be a nail-biter because of all we’ve put the country through in an effort to help our people and planet.

For those who think settling is bad, were you ever part of a family? On long road trips, didn’t your parents want everyone to settle the hell down back there? If we didn’t wake up to daily compromise, life would have been nothing but junk food and constant television. Which some call “executive time.” But that’s not how we live.

It’s a new day. And we’re going to make trade-offs like you’ve never seen before.

Sorry.