Today's Democratic Party: "Of the Lawyers, By the Lawyers and For the Lawyers"

If Republicans are the party of business, Michael Medved writes, Democrats are surely the party of lawyers.

Democrats like to portray themselves as the defenders of the poor and disadvantaged—now called “the middle class”—but the brains behind the party are lawyers.

Medved writes:

The Democrats gathering in Charlotte would love to cast themselves as the party of working people, or of struggling middle-class families, or of aggrieved and downtrodden Americans in every corner of the economy. In presidential politics, however, a more accurate designation would identify the Dems as the party of lawyers: with the re-nomination of Obama and Biden, all six available spots on the last three national tickets have gone to working attorneys.

Last night at the Democratic National Convention, star speakers were a law student, a law professor and a disbarred attorney.

The Democratic Party does not just nominate lawyers for the presidency. It tends to nominate lawyers who are married to lawyers.

Republicans prefer candidates: “with personal experience in the profit-driven world of the private sector.”

Democrats nominate practicing attorneys who have never worked in the private sector.

Naturally and logically enough, Democrats believe that laws, lawsuits, rules and regulations are the solution to all problems.

In Medved’s words:

Modern liberals tend to address every imaginable problem with legal solutions—new legislation, aggressive regulation, persistent lawsuits, and sweeping court decisions. The search for legal remedies for all public and even private dilemmas of course means an expansion of government, which in turn means more jobs for lawyers. When major legislation before Congress now routinely runs to thousands of impenetrable pages, only lawyers benefit: who else will ever write, read, analyze, and mitigate the impact of all the insanely complex new laws?

We should not ignore the fact that the bureaucrats who implement those policies often belong to another pillar of today’s Democratic Party: public sector labor unions.

The unholy alliance of lawyers and labor unions forms the backbone of today’s Democratic Party.

When it comes to the minority voters who keep voting the Democrats in power, Bloomberg News reports that they have effectively done the worst under Obama. With all of the empowered lawyers and unions looking out for their interest they have suffered the most during the past four years:

The recession and anemic recovery, while painful for most Americans, have been especially punishing for blacks, stripping jobs, homes and wealth from people who have historically lagged.

“These groups have been very, very hard hit, not only in the recession, but in the recovery that followed,” says economist Gary Burtless of the Brookings Institution. “Things have been very grim.”

Today’s 14.1 percent black unemployment rate is almost twice the 7.4 percent white rate, and the racial gap -- after narrowing from 2005 to 2009 -- has widened since the recession’s June 2009 end. At Obama’s inauguration, 7.1 percent of whites were jobless compared with 12.7 percent of blacks.

Hmmm… African-Americans had it better under Bush. Who knew?

For the most part union members, especially those who work for the federal government, have done well under Obama. The unions spent their campaign dollars well.

Perhaps it's poetic justice, but the legal profession has not been doing very well under Obama. If lawyers thought that his administration would advance their interests they have  been disappointed.

The reputation of lawyers has suffered, as have job opportunities and salaries within the legal profession.

Fewer and fewer college students are choosing to go to law school today. Fewer and fewer lawyers can find meaningful employment.

In a sense lawyers have brought it on themselves. They succeeded so well that they, like parasites feeding on private enterprise, have gotten too greedy and have damaged their host.

They might console themselves with the coming bonanza from Obamacare, but lawyers ought to have figured out by now that their business cannot thrive if they maintain an adversarial relationship with business.