The Democrats and Wall Street

New Geography reports:

By all historical logic and tradition, Wall Street’s outrageous bonuses—almost $20 billion to Goldman Sachs alone—should be setting a populist wildfire across the precincts of the Democratic Party. Yet right now, the Democrats in both the White House and Congress seem content to confront such outrageous fortune with little more than hearings and mild legislative remedies—like a proposed new bank tax, which, over the next decade, seeks to collect $90 to $100 billion. This amounts, on an annual basis, to about half of this year’s bonus for Goldman’s gold diggers alone. It’s speaking loudly and carrying a stick made of paper mache.

But this should come as no surprise, really. Postmodern Democrats are generally more concerned about the fate of the polar bears than real people on Main Street.

One reason may be that Democrats increasingly collect the bulk of contributions from the very financial sector that they have bailed out and coddled since taking office. However, more substantially, the Democrats—including many “progressives”—seem more comfortable with big business and high finance than their erstwhile working- and middle-class constituencies. For this, we need the Democratic Party?

Another good one from Joel Kotkin.