The left is hoping for bad times, and soon.

If not this fall, then before the 2020 presidential election.  They would rather see harm done to America than see Trump succeed.  A market crash, a war in Asia or the Middle East, another terrorist attack – it doesn't matter.  Just something to deny conservatives a victory.  That's how warped the left has become.

Conservatives did not go around praying for a market crash during the Obama years, but a lot of liberal commentators seem to be doing just that today.  The August issue of Fortune (a member of the liberal Time, Inc. group of publications) has red ink splattered across its cover proclaiming, "The End Is Near."

Interesting timing, just three months from the November election.  Inside, there was MSNBC's Chris Matthews arguing that Wall Street has "fallen out of love with Trump."  The thesis of Matthews's piece is that the president has done everything wrong and nothing right.  He has enacted tariffs, lowered taxes and regulations, spurred growth, and put Americans back to work.  Bad?  Yes, bad for Wall Street.

Not to be outdone, a longer piece by Fortune editor Geoff Colvin purports to demonstrate, in nine pages of small print with eight detailed graphs, that the bull market of the last nine years is ending and that the reason is partly, or largely, Trump.  It should be obvious that this bull market, like every other, will end at some point.  It is not so obvious that it will end soon, though it may.  To me, it is not obvious that it is "Trump's fault."  Indeed, the fact that it has not ended is "Trump's fault."

Yes, the economy is heating up, typical of late-stage bull markets.  As Colvin admits, "the timing of the business cycle is never easy to predict."  But somehow Colvin suggests that a great economy is bad news, and, again, it's "Trump's fault."  So Trump has created millions of jobs and raised wages significantly for the first time since the Bush years, which has driven the market to new highs – but that's a bad thing.  Huh?

Then there's the familiar matter of the yield curve.  It's true that inversion, when short-term rates rise above long-term rates, has always preceded recession, but, as Colvin again admits, we're not there yet.  In fact, since 1980, current levels of tightening have never signaled a recession.  We would have to tighten further for the "always" to be true, and even then, tightening normally occurs months if not years before the recession begins.

This time is different, says Fortune.  Trump is waging a trade war and an immigrant-hostile policy (really? I thought he favored legal immigration) and causing oil prices to rise.  (Haven't his policies expanded American oil production to record levels?  Doesn't that lower what prices would otherwise have been?)

What's obvious is that Trump's policies are driving growth and that growth may continue for years.  That, by the way, is the prediction of the World Bank, which Fortune fails to cite.  According to the World Bank Global Forecast, global economic growth will reach 3.1% in 2018 and "ease slightly in 2019-2020."  The End Is Near?

The liberal elite hate Trump's notion that America's best days are still ahead.  They would have you believe that the days of 3% growth ended in 1970, and nothing can bring them back, especially Donald Trump.  The "new normal," as they used to say in the slow-growth Obama era, is 2%.  America is not what it used to be, and nothing can change that, even Trump's tax cuts and increased military spending, whose economic effect "could be 'as small as zero.'"  When the stimulus no longer works, "you run out of gas...or crash."

The left has been throwing that word around a lot lately.  A "crash" ahead, just ahead of this year's congressional elections or the presidential election in 2020.  Oh, how wonderful, even though it would harm nearly every American.  What counts is restoring the left's control over ordinary Americans, taking away their rights, destroying their liberty.

Bad times ahead.  The end is near.  Take the federal deficit and the high debt load of corporations.  Admittedly, both are excessive, but the way out is growth, not socialism.

And the low unemployment rate.  Yes, for the left, low unemployment, which would seem to be good, is actually bad.  Anything to deny Trump a victory.

Fortune pulls out all the usual suspects to bolster its case of doom and gloom.  There's Ben Bernanke, Robert Schiller, Jeremy Grantham, and Robert Gordon, a Northwestern University economist.  (According to Schiller, "[i]t's kind of like we're in 1928 at the moment.")  The problem with this lineup of all-star economists, as Colvin admits, is that economists as a class have been wrong every time since 1970 if not forever – wrong predicting the beginning of recessions and wrong predicting the end.  So why quote them, especially those who may not exactly be Trump fans, in the article?

This is not to say that Fortune is wrong.  Eventually, a bear market will occur, probably sooner rather than later.  We just don't know when.  The current bull market, if it continues, will soon be the longest in history, and this in itself is reason to be cautious.  Bull markets end with a 20-percent-plus correction.  This bull market will end, probably before the end of Trump's second term.  The problem is that too many liberal economists seem to be wishing it will end sooner.

Wishing for a bear market and an economic recession that puts millions of Americans out of work does not seem like a good thing to me.  To wish for a recession, war, or cataclysm of some kind just to get Trump out of office is a callous and cynical thing to do, but it's now standard practice on the left.  Why not hope for the best, instead, and then judge the president on his merits?

The reason is that getting rid of Trump and what he stands for – the restoration of democracy in America – is now the overriding goal of the left.  Anything that will bring Trump down, from Stormy Daniels to global war, is good news to the left, even if millions suffer or millions die.  That is how far they have gone in the interest of restoring the authoritarian power of the Deep State.  That is how much they despise the deplorables.

It goes way beyond Fortune magazine.  Every liberal venue, from CNN to the Huffington Post, is stocked with arguments as to why the end is near, and they seem to be licking their chops over it.

The media are bad, but Democrat politicians are worse.  Within seconds of any positive news on the economy, Cheerless Chuck is out with reasons why it's not true or won't last.  Hillary Clinton (still on her worldwide "bash Trump" tour), wacky Nancy, fibbing Pocahontas, and Red Alexandria – the message is the same.  Trump is ignorant, incompetent, racist, sexist, and a bully – how could you expect anything he does to work?

The truth is that wishing for your opponent to fail, albeit at terrible harm to the American people, won't contribute anything to the possibility of its happening.  The market is driven by forces so complex that no one, not even Warren Buffett, has been able to predict its movements.  But predicting a crash, a terrorist attack, or another calamity is not just impossible; it is despicable.

Have we gone so far that the left would now sacrifice the lives of millions just to regain political power?  I fear that we have.

Jeffrey Folks is the author of many books and articles on American culture including Heartland of the Imagination and In a Time of Disorder.