We liberals delivered on health care. Over the course of next few months to the next few years, 30 million more people will get health insurance, and everyone will be protected from the evil tactics of health insurance cartels. Things like pre-existing condition exclusions and dropping people when they get sick will be a thing of the past.
We liberals delivered on education reform. Now more people will go to college (and, in turn, become more liberal). Even more people will be able to afford college and paying back student loans will be much easier and more manageable. Repayment rates can be capped at 10 percent of your income, and you will be more likely to get a Pell Grant.
We liberals delivered on getting some important recess appointments, too. Craig Becker’s appointment to the National Labor Relations Board is a true victory on this front. Becker was a union lawyer who will certainly protect workers. Hopefully, this will ultimately lead to the additional labor reforms that America needs.
Almost more important than what these victories mean is the transformation that they helped to bring about. These victories transformed Democrats from being whining, scared, gutless politicians into champions of the American people. We can hold our heads high now.
It is as though the bully came to beat us up and steal our lunch money one time too many and we decided to fight back — and we found the bully was nothing but a paper tiger.
This doesn’t mean that things are going to be easy, or that corporate lobbying has been eradicated. This doesn’t mean that the Republican Party of “hell, no!” will suddenly come to their senses — far from it.
In America’s heartland, right-wing Christian extremists were plotting to attack our government. Luckily, the FBI has bravely raided their compounds and arrested many of them. This may not always be the case. We, as responsible citizens — as progressive liberals both secular and of faith — need to be leery of right-wing, Christian extremists who want to hurt our country, destroy our democracy, and take away our separation of state and church.
As we make more progress toward social justice — health care, education, worker’s rights, and peace — we have to be more and more mindful of those that want to take it away.
Can we continue making progress toward social justice? Hell yes, we can.
Jake DaSilva is a graduate student in library and information science.
