Democrat joy at bad times

David Frum:

Is it 1932 yet?

That’s what many Democrats are hoping! In the wake of this week’s market turmoil, you see smiles on the faces of three groups of people: short sellers, vulture buyers, and Democratic strategists. Wall Street has laid an egg, as Variety famously quipped in 1929, and that means that happy days will soon be here again. You can almost feel the quivering anticipation in the recent column of my friend E.J.
Dionne:

“Americans don't mind wealthy and even rapacious capitalists, as long as they deliver the goods to everyone else. But when the big boys drag everyone else down, Americans rise up in righteous anger. The New Deal political alignment endured for decades because the financial elites were so profoundly discredited by the Great Depression. The New Deal coalition dissolved only when prosperity began to seem durable . . . “

It’s quite a confession that prosperity is bad news for your coalition. It almost makes it seem as if liberals welcome misery. Then and only then will the people rise up to demand—what?

That’s the kicker, isn’t it? In the 1930s, the voters demanded harshly punitive treatment of the bankers and financiers they blamed for the disaster. Will today’s middle-class, home-owning, 401-K-investing electorate demand the same? Or might they just possibly want something very different: not retribution, but reassurance.

...

The irony is that it was Democrats who were responsible for this problem. They are the ones who required mortgage lending to unqualified buyers and it was Democrat operatives who invested Fannie Mae and Freddy Mac resources in the bad loans while paying themselves handsomely. It is those same operatives who are Obama's economic advisers.

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