an open letter to the democratic party

Dear Senators:
Go fuck yourselves.

No, that's too easy. How about...


Dear John, Hillary, Charles, Patrick, Harry, Joe, Joe, Bob, Evan, Russ, Dianne, and all the rest of you:
I've had it. I want out.
That's right. I want out of my relationship with you and your cowardly, ineffective, let's-move-toward-the-center, GOP-whipped party. I'm ashamed to be associated with you. You're too afraid to be yourself.

See, I don't care if you come across as liberal. The more liberal you were, the more I loved you. But then you tried to make everybody else love you, too. I mean, I loved President Clinton because he was all I had. I spent eight years in denial believing he was still mine, while the whole time he was cutting welfare and approving NAFTA just so he could flirt with the center.

Well, he's gone now, and I've gotten used to being on my own. I don't need to be with a party that embarrasses me just so I won't be alone. I have to start thinking about myself now, since I can't count on you to support me. And I'm not even talking about financial support; I mean, I've been the one giving you money all these years, every time you asked. Never mind that my student loans have been cut, I can't find a decent paying job because the market is so bad that I can't find work in my field, and you can't even get it together enough to raise the minimum wage. I could forgive you for that.

Or that watching you stand there and let the Bush administration destroy my country makes me so upset that I need to be on antidepressants, which cost me $150 a month because I can't get health insurance because I'm on antidepressants. I could even overlook that.

But you couldn't even put together enough support IN OUR OWN PARTY to continue debate about Alito???????????? How could you, after all we've been through together? Remember that time when I was 2 weeks late and I was so thankful to you that you had fought for my right to choose? Or that other time, when...uhhh...hmmm. See? I can't even remember anything else you've done for me.

So, that's it. There's really nothing left to say. You can come by and pick up your bumper stickers and your old Kerry-Edwards t-shirts. I'm keeping all the Howard Zinn and Noam Chomsky books and Springsteen CDs because I don't think you'll be needing them. And please don't try to call or get in touch. I don't want this to get ugly.

Leah Krinsky Atkins