By the tone of these CEOs (moaning, groaning, worrying), you'd think they had a meeting with Lenin and not the moderate, pro-market Democrate that Obama is and will always be.

Having failed to get one of its own into the White House, corporate America is not sulking in a corner nursing its broken Romneyphile heart. Instead, some of the country’s best known bosses have been flashing their legs in the direction of Barack Obama, promising to make it worth the president’s while if they start over. Mr Obama is smiling right back, at least for now. On November 14th he sat down with a dozen chief executives and listened to their concerns. They spoke about the sour relationship between the White House and business, and about their frustration at Washington’s refusal to tackle the nation’s fiscal problems. “I came away feeling very encouraged,” said one of the bosses, Dave Cote of Honeywell, a prominent budget hawk, though he added that he was “not confusing words with results”.

If a leader is not giving everything to the CEO class (and I mean everything—tax breaks, business friendly climate, no regulation, no support of unions, the freedom to move money and labor, no consumer protection, no health insurance, no environmental nothing), then he/she is thrown into the same heap of history as Samora Machel and Mao Zedong. For this class, the class that rules much of the world, it comes down to: You are either with us or you're with the communists.