It seems par for the course for the party that gave us the “hate crime” — in which the severity of a crime is measured largely by what the criminal thought when he did it. Democrats claim credit now less for their results than for their intentions, which they assure us are only the best.

They are attacking Mitt Romney, Bain Capital and Wall Street in general, not for failing to create jobs, but because job creation isn’t their first or main purpose — that would be making a profit, growing their business and becoming ever more rich. Job creation is, of course, a great public good, but it is an indirect result of their ambitions. To make themselves rich, entrepreneurs must make or do something that people want. As demand grows, their businesses grow larger to meet it and hire more people, providing livelihoods for hundreds or thousands, who in turn have the wealth to enrich other people, and so it goes on.