While my first reaction to most of the election results has been to dance around my house shrieking "SQUEE!" at the top of my lungs (I'm not lying when I tell you that my jaw actually hurt yesterday evening from smiling so damn much), I am equally feeling the pressure on my party to be up to this monumental task. That's why I was glad to see this post on Democratic Underground highlighted on Salon's Daou Report.
Written by "The Witch", it is an open letter to "Dismayed Conservatives":
I hereby make these promises to you.
We will protect your lives and livelihoods.
We will listen to and respect your beliefs.
We will never try to force you to change your religion, sexual orientation, or first language.
We will do our best to reduce the number of abortions in our country.
We will have no tolerance for corruption and cronyism, even in our own party.
ESPECIALLY in our own party.
We will never tell you that you are unpatriotic.
We will never tell you that your opinion doesn't count.
We will never waste your lives for power.
We will hold our leaders to a high ethical standard and when they succumb to lust for power, WE WILL HOLD THEM ACCOUNTABLE.
If we forget this, please, please, please, remind us.
We need you to do this. You are America as much as we are.
Let's go.
I can only hope that this is the spirit into which our new leaders go. It must be unbelievably tempting to give as good as the Dems have gotten, but I hope they will collectively resist and try to make the radical swing from a bickering body into a governing one.