The private sector has become the Democratic politicians’ punching bag
I didn’t make that line up. It’s an idea voiced by Daniel Henninger in this WSJ article. Henninger believes the disconnect between the majority of Democrats in Congress and the private sector has become profound, leading not only to the demonizing of major industries, corporations, and their executives (not to mention shortsighted bills of attainder such as the AIG bonus tax), but that it will ultimately hurt the economy.
Henninger also points out that “progressive” Democratic groups have—not surprisingly—begun to target those moderate Democrats who are standing up to oppose Obama’s budget. The existence of this thin blue line has predictably aroused their ire.
The Democratic party has now moved so far to the Left that its power is strongly in the hands of its most radical members. In their jubilation at finally being in control after all these years, they would like to crowd out any tempering influences.
However, they are ignoring the law of thirds (which I described several years ago, here). I hope it will be their undoing—that is, before their policies are the undoing of us all.
How many Democratic policymakers have true private sector experience? No, not at a law firm, or a Beltway think tank. At a real, no-kidding producer of goods/services that doesn’t depend on government contracts for the vast majority of its revenue. How many? Either as employer or employee. Without doing any research on it, my guess would be not many, and for those who did work there, not for very long. So, if my guess is correct, the Dems would naturally blame the “other”, which for them is the world outside of government and academia. In other words, the private sector.
It is the closest think to an automatic response on the left (cf the British anthropology prof who thinks we should hang the bankers). When anything goes wrong and there’s money near it, it must not only be business at fault, but exclusively business at fault. It doesn’t seem to even occur to them that politicians could be at fault.
For what it’s worth, the rule of thirds was kinda sorta touched on as long ago as John Adams in describing the American people…seems to be something of an historical constant.