The Continuing War on Wal-Mart

The New American Left has a new battle cry - down with Wal-Mart!

Joe Biden gave a reverberating speech in Iowa this week, and is supported by more and more Democrats that are hoping derision of the nation's largest employer will somehow help them in the polls. What did Joe say?

My problem with Wal-Mart is that I don’t see any indication that they care about the fate of middle-class people...

So Joe thinks that Wal-Mart doesn't care about middle class Americans. First off, is one completely non-expert's opinion on the observed benevolence of a corporation now the litmus test for turning hate of that corporation into a campaign slogan? Further, does Joe realize that middle class Americans actually work and buy things at Wal-Mart - because their goods are cheap? Considering an arbitrary assessment of benevolence is the apparent test, I'd say providing cheap goods should project some sort of aspect of caring.

They talk about paying them $10 an hour. That’s true. How can you live a middle-class life on that?

Joe, just because not every American lives on a Senator's salary doesn't mean there are plenty of Americans that would be quite happy to make $10 an hour. What about non-middle class graduate students? I doubt Joe has ever worked for $7.50 an hour.

The article goes on to analyze how other Democrats and Wal-Mart are reacting to the new Democratic rallying cry. The humorous thing that the poor Democrats don't understand is that Wal-Mart is a red herring. Wal-Mart has become the enemy of the left, because many of its radical elements have decided that a major profitable corporation that does not pay its employees exorbitant amounts of money is somehow evil. This is just another example of the Democrats jumping on to this far-left albeit socialist idea. The Democrats also don't realize that a hell of a lot of people work for Wal-Mart - and if the Democrats' campaigns include their newfound hatred, I doubt that many Wal-Mart employees are going to vote for Democrats.

However, I would have to say my favorite is Wal-Mart hater Senator Evan Bayh of Indiana. He says hating Wal-Mart is not anti-business, it's just his way of trying to help out middle-class Americans. And of course he's not anti-business - he took $10,000 in donations from Wal-mart in 2000 and 2004. His spokesman says that the donations did not "influence" him at all. No, really? I think it gives a pretty clear message to corporations - just because you give a Democrat some money does not mean that he is not going to run on a platform of hating you.

Amazing.