Bill Maher is not the only left-wing plutocrat rooting for a stock market crash and a recession, even a depression. He’s just doing it more noisily, as he always does, to attract attention. Nevertheless, there’s an epidemic of this malign wish fulfillment out there, overt and covert.

Anything to get Trump, even if all of us — well, not quite all, folks like Maher can weather just about anything– have to suffer.

This is true even if the very people — the minorities these self-described liberals and progressives claim they are helping — suffer most from a (naturally) Trump-caused bubble exploding. Meanwhile, in the real world, these same minorities, black and Latino, are doing better than they have in years, possibly ever. What a nightmare for the left. Some are already changing their votes.

Next thing you know — no more identity politics. Then what’s left of the left?

So they pray to God for a depression, or at least a recession. Only they don’t believe in God. So what do they do?

They sabotage the economy by jawing it down, by making it sound worse than it is. This is a clever strategy because the condition of the economy, to a great extent, is what you say it is or, more importantly, feel it is or can convince others that it is. It’s wide open to legerdemain. Economic success is governed almost as much by raw emotion as at is by the reality of profit and loss. What is the mood of consumers? What is the mood of big business, entrepreneurs, etc.?

We saw that dominance of emotion writ large November 2016 when Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman, in a fit of early-stage TDS, assured us on the pages of the New York Times that Trump’s victory would create what would be essentially the mother of all stock market crashes. Krugman didn’t stop to think through the actual possible outcomes of Trump’s policies. He just wished so hard for disaster he checked his brains at the door, disregarding the obvious that markets would tend to adore deregulation and lower taxes. As we all know, the reverse happened. The market rocketed upwards.

Yet Krugman is still regarded as an important authority by a significant number of our citizens. They follow him emotionally as much as, probably more than, scientifically. They too want everything to be the way he wants it to be — in this instance, bad. And their emotions are easily swayed. Almost everyone’s scared about their money. If enough people say something negative is going to happen, it could.

Trump Derangement Syndrome, unchecked, could actually help create an economic downturn. Blame will be put — is being put — on tax reform and deregulation, the very things that ignited the boom. It doesn’t matter that the results of this sabotage are so hurtful to millions. The other side will have won. They will have regained power, or some of it. They’ll deal later with the remains. First come the scare tactics.

For a seemingly benign example of how this works, look no further than Thursday morning’s Daily Mail with the headline “‘We can see a recession coming’: Financial experts see an overheating economy amid rising rates in the housing market – as Warren Buffet’s favorite metric even predicts CRASH.” The actual article begins: “Financial experts say Donald Trump’s economic boom could quickly turn to bust….”

Experts? Quickly? I broke out into a cold sweat when I read that and almost called my broker. Fortunately, I didn’t because the market actually went up for the day. The Daily Mail’s Armageddon-like tone didn’t work.

But that doesn’t mean it won’t in the future. The left is employing strategies right now to do everything possible to wound the economy to sink Trump. This is why the new tariffs, obviously a temporary negotiating ploy, are deliberately treated by our media as if they were a permanent part of our lives and likely to make us miserable, bankrupting everyone from farmers to auto workers.

These cries of economic disaster will only grow more intense as we approach the mid-terms. Every little statistical waver will blown way out of a proportion. Schumer and Pelosi will say that bread lines are imminent. Bernie Sanders and his new leftwing friend Ocasio-Cortez will proclaim conditions for the working class are worse than the 1930s when they have never been better. They could even go full Cloward-Piven to gain power.

The good news is — if they fail at this, they will end up with nothing and be flailing for a long time.

As everyone knows, “It’s the economy, stupid.” But that doesn’t mean you should be stupid about the economy