Democrats’ rants confirm their enemies list is serious business

Sen. Chris Murphy (D-CT) speaks alongside Senate Democrats at a press conference on the Iran War Powers Resolution. Getty Images

Republicans may soon need to write a thank-you note to Connecticut Sen. Chris Murphy. 

By convincing American business that a Democrat-controlled government is an existential threat, Murphy could be the guy who wins the midterms for the GOP.

The senator posted his latest anti-business broadside on X the other day, targeting Paramount head David Ellison by name. 

“Ellison and the information oligarchs should enjoy it while they can,” he sneered, “because when Democrats win power we are going to break these anti-consumer, anti-free speech media conglomerates into pieces.”

This is rich: Murphy’s objection isn’t to information oligarchs, and it’s not in favor of free speech. 

It’s to information oligarchs who aren’t controlled by the Democrats. 

When Facebook and virtually the entire media apparat of this nation collaborated to swing the 2020 election against Donald Trump — even censoring truthful reports, starting with The Post’s, about Hunter Biden’s laptop — Murphy sided with the conglomerates.  

He called anyone spreading the story — which again, turned out to be true — a “Russian asset.” 

He wasn’t calling for breakups then, when virtually the entire US media apparat joined ranks to silence the story before the election. 

Nor did he squawk when Google sent Republican Party emails to users’ spam folders, or when it and Meta silenced and demonetized conservative online outlets.

Now he is, along with other loudmouthed leftist senators like Elizabeth Warren and Reuben Gallego, who are making similar threats.

I’m sure it’s playing well with the Democratic peanut gallery — but what the information oligarchs are hearing is that a Democrat-controlled government is a deadly threat to their very existence. 

If I were them, I’d be thinking hard about how to do to the Democrats what was done to Trump in 2020:  Make sure the other side wins.

Because this time I think the Democrats are dead serious about their post-victory plans.

For decades, Democrats have been amping up their verbal attacks on “the rich” and “big business” — even as their support came increasingly from, well, the rich and big business. 

Their rich supporters basically discounted that rhetoric, assuming it was all pablum for the peasantry.

And it was — then. 

But now, big business must have noticed that Democrats’ attacks are no longer hypocritical. 

Around the country, Democrats who are in power are going for the throats of their former allies.

In California, state legislators are killing the goose that laid their state’s golden eggs, mercilessly launching punitive taxes aimed at the very tech tycoons who have boosted California’s economy — and Sacramento’s revenues. 

Many of those billionaires are leaving, and Democrats are responding by trying to figure out ways to keep taxing them even when they’re gone.

In the Big Apple, Zohran Mamdani has told us that “capitalism is theft,” and has called for “the end of the free market” and “seizing the means of production.” 

He has flat-out said that billionaires shouldn’t exist, which I’d expect billionaires to find disturbing. 

Especially because Mamdani is no “parlor pink”: He’s backing up his words with (destructive) action in New York City, painting a target on billionaire Ken Griffin’s back while gloating over new taxes on the hedge funder’s expensive Manhattan apartment.

Mamdani calls corporations and businesses “predatory,” has waged war on landlords and is launching an attack on grocery stores that’s more likely to harm small bodegas than big chains. 

(He hates business, you see, but he doesn’t understand business.)

And of course, Democrats across the nation are treating alleged CEO-killer Luigi Mangione like a hero, cheering the multiple assassination attempts on Trump and threatening to jail or silence their political opponents by force the moment they have the ability to do so.

Rich guys may have thought they could ignore all this noisemaking in the past, but the Democrats’ increasingly crazy constituents have become a violent threat. 

And the increasingly crazy Democratic machine is a major legal and regulatory and fiscal threat, to boot.

Ironically, I’m actually in favor of antitrust action in certain areas. 

When media and online businesses can be corralled by a political party as they were in 2020, it’s a sign they are too concentrated and wield way too much power.

But Murphy’s problem isn’t really that these industries are too concentrated —  it’s that he and his party don’t entirely control them. 

Look how upset Democrats were, and how damaged they’ve been, by Elon Musk’s purchase of just one platform (Twitter, now X) they once controlled.

Well, I may not be a billionaire, but when somebody says he plans to destroy me if he wins back power, I’m going to do my best to make sure he never gets the chance. 

Let’s see if the actual billionaires are equally smart.

Glenn Harlan Reynolds is a professor of law at the University of Tennessee and founder of the InstaPundit.com blog.