John Puri writes for National Review Online about a current obsession among leading national Democrats.
Democrats have coalesced around a target to pile onto this election cycle: billionaires — plus the first-ever trillionaire — and the large corporations they own and manage. Resenting the wealthy is the party’s idea to reconnect with voters upset about the economy. Unfortunately, progressives seem to have traded a set of niche cultural fixations that no one else shares for a niche economic fixation that few others share. A successful company going public and making shareholders rich does no one any injury. If anything, we should make regulatory policy more accommodating for companies seeking to access public markets. …
… My colleague Charlie Cooke likes to point out an eerie pattern among Democratic politicians: Progressives tend to “download” an identical new position or talking point in unison, as if receiving a software update to their programmed ideology, while acting as if it’s the most obvious and eternal truth in the world. Their latest patch has Democrats turning their scowls, in one synchronized sweep, toward America’s wealthy.
Suddenly, Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez are headlining the “Fighting Oligarchy Tour.” Support for a wealth tax is a litmus test for presidential hopefuls. Blue states are jacking up their top marginal tax rates. Insurgent candidates like Zohran Mamdani and Graham Platner are surging to primary success on platforms of white-hot rage against rich people and corporations, who they allege have rigged the U.S. economy. Mainstream Democrats have embraced their rhetoric. The progressive-activist class is genuinely enthused for the first time in a while — to defeat Republicans, sure, but even more so to grind the wealthy into the dust.
There is nothing worse you can be in Democratic politics right now than a billionaire. Unless, of course, you’re a trillionaire. …
… Billionaires, let alone trillionaires, they declared, could not exist unless they swindled their wealth from the public. Musk didn’t earn his wealth, don’t you know? It was actually created by the government, so the public has a rightful claim to take it back.
