Democrats Bid Business Adieu

Democrats Bid Business Adi= eu

Wall Street Journ= al

Barack Obama meets with a flock of nervous bankers= at the White House tomorrow to reassure them he understands their interests. G= ood luck. There has always been tension between the Democratic Party and the private sector. That tension is over. With its vote in the House of Representatives to punish corporate bonus payments, the national Democratic Party has disconnected itself entirely from the private sector.<= /span>

AIG Chairman Edward Liddy arrives on Capitol Hill, March 18, 2009.

The public bear-baiting of AIG's Ed Liddy, and then passage of the bonus bill, gave the n= ation a good look at the modern Democratic Party freed of constraints.=

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.

True socialists at least think about markets so th= ey can criticize them. The Democratic Party's leadership doesn't stir to even = that level of engagement. In the House, Senate and some corners of the Obama Whi= te House, the party is acting as if the marketplace was the world of an alien tribe, which it has to control through intimidation or demands for protecti= ve tribute (read: campaign contributions).

This is not true of the entire 90% of self-identif= ied Democrats who voted for Barack Obama. But Democrats who work in real jobs rather than work for the mothership in Washingt= on must recognize that the party's obsessions are becoming ever less hospitabl= e to a functioning economy, or Mr. Geithner's labors= to that goal.

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This decoupling has occurred mainly in the Northea= st (New England lost its last House Republican in 2008) and in California. Invulnerable seats have allowed politicians from these regions to control k= ey committee chairs affecting the economy: Barney Frank (finance), Henry Waxman (regulation) Pete Stark (the health subcommittee of Ways and Means), Chris = Dodd (Senate banking), Ted Kennedy (health), Barbara = Boxer (environment).

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 pro= fit and loss. It is wholly inconceivable. Or helping an own= er of an auto-parts company manage through a real crisis. They wouldn't ha= ve a clue.

That anti-bonus bill was not unique. It is routine= .

With the passing of the anti-bonus bill, the natio= nal Democratic Party completes its decoupling from the private sector, says Won= der Land columnist Daniel Henninger.

Spending in the president's budget, skyrocketing to 28.5% of GDP this fiscal year, is a harbinger. No matter. This week two of = the party's "progressive" (the left) Web-based activist groups -- the force that kept the Obama candidacy afloat -- announced an effort to harass some 50 moderate-to-conservative Blue Dog Democrats in the House for expres= sing doubts about Mr. Obama's reforms, such as "health care for all." = They name 20 "conservative" senators, including such notable right-win= gers as Evan Bayh, Mary Landrieu, Ben Nelson, Robert= Byrd and Blanche Lincoln. This is not your father's Democratic Party.=

Wall Street's collapsed businesses and layoffs have devastated New York's tax revenues. So what? Attorney General Andrew Cuomo flogged Bank of America into giving up the names of Merrill Lynch bonus recipients. Imagine the coincidence this week when two of Merrill's most respected hands, analyst David Rosenberg and strategist Richard Bernstein, quit. Connecticut Attorney General Richard Blumenthal and the legislature a= re also mau-mauing AIG over bonuses.

Nor can it be said that these Democrats are merely= scapegoating the private sector to deflect blame for = the politicians' share of the mortgage debacle. Using the private sector as the party's punching bag is also now routine. Al Gor= e and John Kerry ran at Big Oil, Big Pharma and Big Insurance. With mercurial suppleness, so did the current president. These "big" industries are proxies for the whole world of owners and managers, who somehow now always find themselves beyond acceptable politics= as enemies of the people's interests. A Democratic Party that was always anti-Wall Street is becoming anti- Main Street.

Meanwhile, plaintiffs l= awyers assault the private sector, dig cash out of it, and transfer a percentage b= ack to Democratic re-election campaigns. Democrats in Congress then try to legislate provisions to make the private sector vulner= able to more such lawsuits. Congress has passed the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, with the Paycheck Fairness Act on tap.

If the private sector is now largely an abstractio= n to Democrats in Congress, they will continue to make mistakes, explicit like t= he bonus bill or just thoughtless errors that constantly disrupt operations for private companies.

This will have a dampening effect on the U.S. grow= th rate and its ability to create jobs, especially for new, younger entrants.<= o:p>

Some of Mr. Obama's supporters need to reboot thei= r 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.