seems to be my constant companion. I thought I was angry during the Bush years, but as it turns out George W, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Karl Rove, Condi Rice and the rest of the gang that couldn’t shoot straight were just a mild peeve compared to how I feel now.

You see the anger I’m carrying around with me 24/7 is the white hot, blistering anger of betrayal which is far more potent than just your run-of-the-mill anger caused by expected bad behavior. I expected George W, his administration and his Republican Congress to do all the hideous things they did during the eight years of hell that defined his administration. The incompetence, arrogance, corruption and malfeasance were as predictable as the sun rising in the East, certainly wrath-worthy, but not much of a surprise.

That’s why I and everyone I know worked so hard, first in 2000, then in 2004, 2006 and 2008 raising money, pounding on doors, phone banking other states, emailing and blogging to see more Democrats elected. We just knew once we got a Democratic President and a Democratic majority in Congress, a new day was going to dawn in America, goodness and right were going to triumph.

And in 2008 all our hard work and sacrifice paid off. We not only got a new Democratic president, we got a transcendent president, a man of vision and hope who promised to lead us on another better path where our civil rights would be restored, our senseless wars on foreign soil would be stopped, our citizens would cease being discriminated against because of sexual orientation, steps would be taken to halt dangerous climate change, the lawlessness and greed of our financial institutions would come to an end, a woman’s right to choose would be sanctified, and every American citizen would have accessible, affordable healthcare.

And if that wasn’t rewarding enough, we went on to achieve the impossible, the holy grail of politics, a Democratic president and a super-majority of Democrats elected to Congress. Now there was nothing standing in our way, real change would come to America.

At least it would if the Democrats we strove so hard to elect didn’t sell us down the river for thirty pieces of silver and a Hershey Bar with Almonds. We knew we could expect nothing from the Republicans, but who could have imagined that once in actual positions of power, it would be the Democrats that would delay, obstruct, undermine and dilute all the legislation needed to deliver on the promises they and the president-elect made when they were running for office? How could we guess that instead of protecting a woman’s right to choose Democrats would author and pass more restrictive abortion legislation than the most conservative Republican had ever imagined could be passed? Who knew that the money and sweat we poured into the Democrats’ campaigns would cease to matter once they were elected and pocketing those giant checks from the medical insurance companies, financial institutions, wall street traders and every other special interest, big business lobby that came knocking on their doors? How were we to know that the only thing the Democrats hoped to achieve by becoming the majority party in Congress was a longer list of representatives with D’s after their names?

During the past eleven months I have become steadily angrier and angrier until my fury is so all-consuming I am unable to watch either Countdown or Rachel Maddow, read the daily kos, Huffington Post or Firedog Lake for fear that if I hear or see the names Lieberman, Nelson, Lincoln, Stupak, Landrieu or any of the other back-stabbing Democrats, I might spontaneously combust.

The sad news is that if the Democrats reward our hard work on their behalf with indifference and hostility to the Democratic values they claim to support, activists like me will be sitting on our hands come 2010 and 2012, and the Democrats will once again snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. While none of us would like to see that happen, there is an upside. At least I’ll get to go back to my familiar, healthy anger at the Republicans, who will, after all, act as they are expected to act.