At the beginning of my senior year of high school in September 2016, I heard several fellow seniors complain about an article they had to read over the summer for their journalism class in the fall. The article labeled modern-day American liberals as smug and lazy, as they assume they make enough sense in their progressive ideas for the whole country to agree with them. I, like many other liberal seniors at my school, quickly dismissed the article as incorrect and the author as uninformed of what modern-day liberalism really is about.

Soon enough came November 8th, 2017, the day that proved to me how the author who had been calling us smug was right all along. Somehow Donald Trump, the antithesis of progressivism, ended up becoming the president of the United States. Us liberals assumed that the vast majority of the country thought of him as a clown, a predator, a racist, and any and every bad name in the book, but we were proven wrong. We really did look smug before the election, and directly afterward we all cried out in confusion at how his assuming the office of president was even remotely possible.

There were, of course, many unnecessary mistakes made by both the modern-day smug liberals and the Clinton campaign during the 2016 election season. Not only did we assume that the vast majority of the country would be against Donald Trump, we also overlooked the needs and opinions of citizens in the rust belt, who were frequently visited by Donald Trump, because we thought we had their votes already. Lastly, we decided our pick for president should be the most controversial and polarizing leftist politician in recent American history. This all led to the Democrats losing a presidential election that could otherwise have been easily won, and it also put the country in a state of anxiety and uncertainty once Donald Trump took the wheel.

However, in the wake of the election, an unprecedented level of leftist activism also got started. After a brief two-month recovery from the stunning results of the election, it all started with the Women’s March. Thousands and thousands of people in pink hats took to the streets to protest the inauguration of Donald Trump, a man who had bragged about sexually assaulting women and was still elected to be the president of the United States. Then came climate change marches, the start of Indivisible, a sharp increase in donations to Planned Parenthood, the increased use of social media to protest Trump’s tweets, Facebook’s search for accuracy in the news that appeared on its site, a Broadway show starring leftist filmmaker Michael Moore that was entirely dedicated to his plan to stop the Trump Administration, and so many more forms of protest against our current president. The American left went through a reawakening like never before.

Essentially this makes Donald Trump a gift to American liberals. Now more than ever we are fighting to get more US citizens on our side. Now more than ever we realize what could happen if we don’t watch out and go back to assuming we’d win elections against bigots and racists. Now more than ever young liberals in this country are involved in and interested in politics, whether that’s through staying informed, being activists, or even running for office. Now more than ever is the American left actively fighting for what it believes in.

And the revived grit and subsequent activism of the left has shown results. I was incredibly delighted to wake up on the one-year anniversary of the 2016 election to local election results that were huge successes for the American left. Virginia has elected Democratic governor Ralph Northam, who defeated Ed Gillespie, a Republican in favor of preserving statues that commemorate Confederate generals. New Jersey now also has a Democratic governor, and in the 13th district of Virginia, Democrat Danica Roem won a seat in the Virginia House of Delegates, becoming the first openly-transgender state lawmaker in United States history.

However, we cannot let these results satisfy us. The important thing is to keep the current leftist momentum going as we approach the 2018 elections next year. Next year will be the most consequential year for American Democrats since Donald Trump’s election, as one-third of the Senate seats and all the House seats will be up for grabs. In 2018 only three Senate seats and 24 House seats have to flip from Republican to Democrat in order for Congress to be controlled by the Democrats, which will be crucial in stopping the Trump Administration from achieving its goals. As long as liberals do not go back to their old smug ways and stay active American citizens, this can be achieved, and eventually we will get the upper hand again.

Let’s keep liberals from going lazy.