Henninger On The Anti-Business Democratic Party

I have always believed that the Congressional Democrats, once in power, would be incapable of stopping themselves from excess liberalism.

Nevermind that the country is far less liberal than they are. The Congressional liberals are pathological.

Last Thursday, the Wall Street Journal's Daniel Henninger wrote an excellent piece encapsulating this phenomenon entitled, "Democrats Bid Business Adieu." He wrote,

"The current version of the party has largely broken free of any understanding whatsoever of the private sector- how it works or what it needs to function.

But Democrats who work in real jobs rather than work for the mothership in Washington must recognize that the party''s obsessions are becoming ever less hospitable to a functioning economy, or Mr. Geithner's labors to that goal.

Put it this way: Imagine any of this generation's Democratic establishment taking a job at Procter & Gamble in Cincinnati as a middle-manager responsible for a division of employees and its annual profit and loss. It is wholly inconceivable. Or helping an owner of an auto-parts company manage through a real crisis. They wouldn't have a clue."

I briefly mentioned something along these lines this evening to a squash partner about whom I've written before. He is a New Jersey-born, liberal Democratic lawyer. When I broached the subject of the inadvisability of a professional political class, he didn't quite get my point.

He is too liberal, and too far gone.

As Henninger observes,

"A Democratic Party that was always anti-Wall Street is becoming anti-Main Street."

He then closes with the passage,

"Some of Mr. Obama's supporters need to reboot their vision. They did not sign on just to him, but to him and his party. That party is creating a world of its own, a world being drained of oxygen for the kind of people who build the nation's economy."

After Reagan, I didn't think we'd every sink to this low point again. Neither did most of my friends, who are, of course, conservative. But we have.

I guess America will have to endure several years of this serious political miscalculation, and its tragic, real negative economic consequences, before we come to our collective senses. Until then, it's going to be a very rough ride.