It'd been my observation that throughout history, that although Dems tend to be anti-big business, the economy always seem to run better while they are in office. Witness FDR and even Clinton (he had a harder time because Reps controlled congress during large portions of his term). Generally speaking, Reps support lassaiz faire (sp?), where they loosen government restrictions on business and let businessmen run the economy. However, it's been my observation that businessmen are the worst people to have the reigns of the economy.
A businessman's concern is to make money and money now. They have a single focus and are unable to see the big picture that their actions actually will screw themselves in the long run. Government needs to guide them, to steer them in a direction away from blunder. FDR learned this during the depression. At first he tried to get them to cooperate, to make changes on their own initiative. In the end he learned he had to practically point an economic gun to their heads and said "You either roll with the policies or be liquidated" and forced businesses to follow government initiatives. Only then did the economy turn around.
Businessmen are not academics and are no historians. All they see is that Democratic policy means tighter government restrictions. What they don't realize is that these restrictions are usually in place to ensure that revenue is diverted from employers to employees. And employees are your typical consumers. Sine consumers now have more disposable income, they start spending more. This, in turn, creates higher profits, which creates more jobs and more revenue, etc. This was how FDR was able to start turning the economy around during the great depression: by forcing businesses hands, essentially, to force businesses to pay their employees more. The Dems won't be able to do much economically while they only control congress, but put a Democratic president or a progressive Republican at the helm, and a stronger economy is what will result.
