The long national nightmare is over
I remember waking up one day back in 1994 to discover that a group of rightwing revolutionaries had taken control of the government under the auspices of a document called “The Contract with America.” It was the first time I actually paid attention to politics in a serious way, and their rhetoric — full of contempt and hate for the Democrats — and promises to at last achieve the Republican dream of undoing the New Deal frightened me. If you look back at history, the American middle class only exists today because of the New Deal and the famous GI Bill policies of the post-World War II period. And I think we’ve seen after 12 years of Republican rule that the American middle class has been on the decline because of the revolutionaries’ policies. For many people, including many people in my family, the country has been sliding into the third world these past few years. Now we have a chance to reverse that slide and become the great country we were prior to the day that Newt Gingrich and his corrupt cronies took office.
Right now, Jim Webb’s victory speech is on television, and I still can’t believe it. We have Virginia, Montana and Missouri — all red states. The tide really has turned, America has had enough of the Republicans and their failed war of choice, their ridiculous economic policies, and their false piety. I feel like I’ve been asleep, stuck in a nightmare since 1994. Finally, at long last, that nightmare is over.
