To: Calvin McDonald, CEO, Lululemon
From: Mitch Berg, Irascible Peasant
Re: Business Stuff

Mr. McDonald,

Last week, a couple of employees at a Lululemon store were axed after they tried to react like a normal law-abiding human when someone robbed their store.

You defended this response:

Lululemon’s CEO stands by his decision to axe two employees who called the police while three masked men robbed a Georgia outpost, citing the company’s “zero-tolerance policy” for intervening with a robbery as reason for firing the workers.

“We have a zero-tolerance policy that we train our educators on around engaging during a theft,” Lululemon CEO Calvin McDonald told CNBC during Friday’s “Squawk on the Street.”

“Educators” are what Lululemon calls its workers…

Ferguson said that once a robbery occurs, workers are instructed to “scan a QR code. And that’s that. We’ve been told not to put it in any notes, because that might scare other people. We’re not supposed to call the police, not really supposed to talk about it.”

However, McDonald said that the policy is in place “because we put the safety of our team, of our guest, front and center. It’s only merchandise,” he told CNBC.

Question : Since it’s “only merchandise”, why even charge for it?

That is all.

120 years ago, when you went into a general or dry goods or grocery store, you went to the counter, got hold of a clerk, and gave or related a list of what you wanted. That clerk would then run around the shelves in back and bring the order up front, ring it up, and send you on you way.

The bottleneck is obvious. Shopping speed is limited by the number and speed of the clerks available.

So a little over 100 years ago, when the chain now known as “A&P” rolled out a model where the customer could walk through the aisles and “pick” the order themselves, and get it rung up by dedicated cashiers when they were good ‘n ready, removing the bottleneck? It revolutionized shopping. The old fasioned “Warehouse PIcker” model pretty much disappeard.

Until now.

A new Walgreens concept being tested in Chjcago brings back the “General Store” model, with a thin veneer of technology to cover that 19th century smell:

In what was once a typical Walgreens, there are now just two short aisles of so-called “essentials” where “customers may shop for themselves.” If you want anything else—a bottle of booze, a deodorant brand deemed “non-essential”—you’ll need to order it at a kiosk and pick it up at the counter.

After undergoing a few weeks of construction, the store reopened on Tuesday. The pharmacy is in the back and to the left, equipped with a fancy new kiosk system of its own. An employee will teach you how to use it.

To the right, gated by anti-shoplifting devices to protect the inventory, two rows of low-rise shelves offer a very limited selection of those so-called “essentials.” Unlike the tall shelves you’re used to seeing in your neighborhood Walgreens, this store’s shelves are no more than five feet tall, giving everyone a clear look at what everyone else is up to…After placing your order, a plastic-framed sign next to the computer instructs, you should “relax while we shop for you.” When your order is ready, head to the pickup/FedEx/Western Union counter to claim your goods.

It’s because of crime, of course.

Democrat governance – dragging us back to the middle ages, a century and an industry at a time.

To: Target Corp
From: Mitch Berg, Obstreporouis Peasant
Re: Your Descent Into Totalitarianism

Target,

I started boycotting you a couple weeks ago, over the whole “grooming little kids” thing.

Truth be told, it’s been pretty easy.

And it just got easier:

I’d be creeped out of a company required employees to be Christian conservatives – but nobody, not even the dreaded Chik-Fil-A, actually does that.

Forcing political compliance on employees?

Yet another reason Minnesota needs to suck it up and elect an actual Attorney General.

Oh, yeah – not spending a dime with you for the duration.

What is the duration? That’s up to you.

That is all.

UPDATE: A friend of the blog emails:

The only significant difference between working for Target and joining a cult is that Target doesn’t kill you if you try to leave (Yet)

I was thinking something more like the French Catholics chasing the Huguenots out of the country

It’s not a good week to be a Target shareholder.

Target’s stock price has taken a hit amid the backlash over its LGBT-themed products.

The New York Post noted on May 17 the retailer’s stock closed at $160.96 per share, giving it a market value of $74.3 billion.

But as of Thursday morning, its stock price was hovering around $140 a share. And its market value was down roughly $10 billion and around $64 billion.

Target is…

…I was about to say “pushing back”.

But it’s more “trying to deflect”: This piece is called “Target is being held hostage by annti-LGBTQ campaign”.

No word if any “pouncing” was also involved.

But here’s the part were I have a question. Target accepts a certain amount of “breakage”; shoplifting, vandalism, even people opening containers to see what’s i before they buy unopened ones. They accept it as part of the cost of doing business – even more so today, when their urban stores are plagued with rampant theft and vandalism.

So about this bit here:

The campaign became hostile, with threats levied against Target employees and instances of damaged products and displays in stores…In the end, Target opted to protect employee safety by removing certain items that it said caused the most “volatile” reaction from opponents.

DIsplays get damaged all the time. And Target employees are no strangers to angry, hostile customers. None of which is OK.

But Target is claiming there’ve been attacks, even violence, against Target workers.

So where are the reports of the actual acts of violence?

No video? Nothing in writing anywhere?

Call me a cynic, but it almost appears that Target is trying to deflect blame for its market bleeding away from tuck-under swimsuits for teenage boys and Satanic designers, and over to the Phantom MAGA Menace.

Someone show me if I’m wrong, here.

UPDATE 7:03 AM

Oh.

Given that the demand for “right wing violence” exceeds the supply by an order of magnitude or two, it was always a safe bet. But hate assuming

You and your significant other each earn $60,000 a year. That’s a total household income of $120,000.

Your bills – housing, transportation, loan payments, food, everything you do – come to $10,000 a month. Your family budget is balanced.

You go out to the casino one night, and get the luckiest break ever; you walk out $80,000 ahead. 

You buy a bigger house, a newer car (and a bridge loan to finish paying off your old one), do some remodeling, put a couple of vacations and cruises and a whole lot of happy hours, on your capital one card. 

With the new mortgage, car loan, revolving credit and loans to pay for all the other goodies, your monthly expenses go up to $16,000 a month – requiring a $200,000 a year income between you and your significant other – who, remember, are still earning $120,000 a year between you. So when you’ve burned through that $80 windfall, you’ll be coming up $80,000 a year in the red.

Your options to avoid insolvency, foreclosure, and repossession are:

a. Downsize, quick – go back to a smaller house, cheaper car, etc.

b. Keep going back to the casino and hope for another big score, and hope your significant other isn’t too stupid to know what a longshot that is.

c. Browbeat your significant other into earning more money so you don’t go bankrupt, and hope he or she doesn’t leave you. As the significant other why they hate children if they don’t ratchet their income up, but fast.

That’s exactly what the state legislature and Governor Klink have done; the pandemic left the state with a one time windfall that they have spent, and much more. 

And you and I, the taxpayers of Minnesota, are the significant other. 

So what are they going to do about it?

Well, they’re going to hope that you’re a dumb spouse that thinks you can bank on casino winnings. But they are just going to hold out for option C, and demand you pony up more.

That’s exactly what just happened.

If this were a marriage, you would call the big spender an abusive spouse. 

So when you are the victim, what do you call the perpetrator? 

With great fanfare, Minneapolis and Saint Paul raised their minimum wages to $15 an hour. 

And now, the Minneapolis Federal Reserve says the policy has done…well, exactly what every conservative said it would do:  

 Pay is up 1% among those with jobs – but 2% fewer are employed as a direct result of the policies, and that’s just scratching the surface (emphasis added):

Many economists have reached similar conclusions about minimum wage increases in the past. Still, the size of the impacts the researchers measured — by comparing Minneapolis and St. Paul to data culled from other Minnesota cities from 2017 through 2021 — were eye-popping, especially in low-wage industries.

Take Minneapolis’ retail sector, for example: The minimum wage increase led to 28% fewer retail jobs than researchers would’ve expected from a similar city during the same five-year period. By this comparison, Minneapolis also saw a 20% drop in hours worked and a 13% dip in aggregate worker earnings.

Across St. Paul’s restaurant industry, the city’s 2018 minimum wage hike was responsible for drying up nearly one-third of available jobs, the study found. In “limited-service” (fast food) restaurants, both hours and earnings fell by more than half after the increase took effect.

“Good, they’re mostly terrible jobs anyway” say the white progressives from the non-profit/government/industrial complex. They re literally spinning this as good news – or excuses for more programs.

It’s possible that Big Left isn’t pushing these minimum wages as a way to gut opportunity for entry level workers. But if it were, I’m at a loss for what they’d do differently.

The Good News, of a sort? The social media at Bud LIght, and its parent Anheuser Busch, have gone quiet since the Dylan Mulvaney flap.

Bud Light operates one of those fun, friendly social media accounts we see quite often from corporate giants these days. On March 30, it tweeted or replied to tweets over fifteen times, with messages on the order of “Win tickets to Stagecoach for you and a friend! Travel and hotel accommodations covered” and “Have a cold one for us.” On March 31 came twenty more tweets and replies, including “There’s still time to win beer money. Which women’s team do you think will win it all?,” and a reply to a well-wisher: “Bud Light loves you back.” On April 1 it was more of the same, but we haven’t heard from Bud Light since 8:50PM that evening, when it tweeted: “Beers on us? Must be game time. For a chance to win, cheer on your team with #EasyToEnjoySweepstakes in the replies.” That was the day that Mulvaney was revealed to be Bud Light’s new spokesdude. But isn’t Bud Light proud, like all LGBTQETC activists constantly insist they are?

It isn’t just Bud Light, either. The UK’s Daily Mail reported Sunday that “The famous beer also hasn’t posted on their main Instagram feeds since March 31 and have not posted to Facebook since March 30. Bud Light’s parent company, Anheuser-Busch, has also gone without posting since April 1.” This is unusual, for “while they have gone a few days without tweeting in the past, the @BudLight is typically fairly active, as are their other regular social channels.” What could account for this? It looks as if it’s because of Dylan Mulvaney.

So, “get woke, go broke”. Simple as . Bob’s your uncle, right?

Maybe. Maybe not.

As we discussed last week, Bud LIght’s chief executive, Alissa Heinerscheid, is a young, intensely “woke” woman, a product of a $60K/year prep school, Harvard and Wharton.

Now, we can joke about her background – as Dennis Prager says, “it takes an elite education to produce someone this stupid” – or the near term results of the decision.

But while Heinerscheid may not be “smart”, or “well-educated” in any holistic sense of the term, she is certainly well-schooled. And that brings us to….

The Bad News: What if Anheuser Busch knows this, and considers it an acceptable cost to build up its Environment and Social Governance (ESG) score – the American version of Red Chinese “Social Credit” score for business (and people, sooner than later, if they get their way)?

…like a resume that looks like this:

It’s the woman who made, uh, trans-woman Dylan Mulvaney the poster…um, person for, not Stella Artois, not even Blue Moon, but..

…Bud Light.

Beege at and our old friend David Strom at Hot Air run down the rest of the story.

Nothing says Bud Light like…well…

Thing is, I didn’t like Bud Light before this. It is barely drinkable. It isn’t even legally beer in Europe. It’s malted battery acid. Bilge drippings.

What the hell’s a guy supposed to boycott?

Brooklyn Park WalMart to close:

A Walmart spokesperson said after a “careful and thoughtful review process” the company made the “difficult decision” to close the location on Friday, April 21. 

In a statement, they added that the store didn’t perform  “as well as we hoped” and didn’t meet the company’s financial expectations, but employees will be able to transfer to another store.

This follows on the heels of Target announcing they’ll be closing their Uptown mini-store. With that closing, the chain’s explanation made sense; the price of the land in Uptown was higher than the low-service mini-Target was worth.

For now.

As to Shingle Creek Crossing? It’s not land values. The shoplifting got it.

#Vibrant.

Social media droogs from Crocus Hill and Northeast are chortling, thinking the store will be turned into an abstract performance space or something.

The latest casualty of Democrat rule?

$1 Pizza in NYC:

You’re paying for those “stimmy checks” and failed banks one way or the other, peasant.

So maybe not all HR people are remedial:

I’d love to see if that is still true at companies that officially embrace “Diversity, Equity and Inclusion” (DEI), or if the actual hiring managers at companies that adopt such frippery also find potential employees like that to be a complete pain in the ass, too…

Senator Smith took to Twitter to shill for “ESG“ – rules that require businesses to make decisions based on “Environment, Social Credit, [woke corporate] Governance l”practices.in other words, replacing fiduciary responsibility with “woke“ “social justice“ (read: Marxist) values.

there are really only two possibilities:

• Smith really is this ignorant.
• She knows she can count on a majority of her voters being this ignorant.

Given the last few elections in Minnesota, #2 isn’t the dumbest strategery .

A friend of the blog emails:

I was at Pheasant Fest last week and the American Petroleum Institute had a booth. Not sure why, but I believe it’s because so many pipelines cross pheasant country.

Well I told the guys I want a tee shirt that says ” I like fossil fuels!”.   

He told me, “That’s great! My idea was “The oil industry saved the whales!” 

I’d take that shirt too

Someone get a business card to that guy.

I worked in radio long enough that I make a point of never revelling in the job misfortunes of others.

So yesterday’s news – 10% staff layoffs at National Public Radio – don’t provoke a happy jig. I wish em all luck, even the most useless mid-level bureaucrat among ’em.

But…has the organization learned the right lessons?

(Emphasis added):

When asked about his priorities, Lansing invoked what he has called the network’s “North Star” since his arrival in the fall of 2019: a push to ensure the network has a bigger and broader audience base, rooted in younger and more diverse listeners, readers and consumers. The emphasis, he says, must be on drawing in “the future audience to make NPR sustainable for the next 50 years.”

“Younger”? Well, over the past decade, the network has sure jammed down more than its share of breezy mediocrities (“It’s Been a Minute”, “The Moth Radio Hour”) – not sure if yesterday’s news is a verdict on that.

As to “more diverse” – they’ve tripled down on antagonizing half their audience. Even their “game shows” carry the message; the once excellent “Wait, Wait, Don’t Tell Me“, which used to include the late PJ O’Rourke as a regular panelist, has become as lively and politically unpredictable as “Late Night with Steven Colbert“.

But you remember above, when I said I didn’t take joy in others misfortunes?

Well, I’m going to ask forgiveness for this, since I’m going to make an exception. Emphasis added:

The layoffs are in keeping with an increasingly grim landscape for media companies over recent months. Vox Media cut jobs by 7%; Gannett and Spotify by 6%. The Washington Post, owned by Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, eliminated its Sunday magazine and a handful of other jobs. After becoming part of Warner Bros. Discovery, CNN cut hundreds of jobs and killed off its brand-new streaming service, CNN+.

Maybe it’s not “joy”. Maybe more “I told you so”.

Except Vox. That’s pure childlike joy.

One of the symptoms of a strong, thriving downtown, is when multiple outlets of a popular store chain, selling a common addictive product to locals and passersby, close en masse.

Haines – good news! – that’s exactly what’s happening!

Minnesota-based Caribou Coffee is reportedly closing some of its downtown Minneapolis shops in the near future.

Four stores, including three in the skyway, will be closing at the end of next month, as a part of Minneapolis’ continued renaissance.

After twenty years on Eat Street, “Bad Waitress” – as perfect a metaphor for life in a city run by Democrats – has abused its last customer.

“When we opened The Bad Waitress, we set out to serve our friends and neighbors better food with a fresh approach. We’ve believed since the start that brunch makes everything better – but this time, it couldn’t save the day,” the Cohens wrote. “We hope you’ll join us for one last lunch date, boozy brunch, mid-morning coffee, or to use your Bad Waitress gift card before we close our doors on Sunday, January 29.”  

They actually had two locations. The other one, up in Northeast, closed…

…oh, just you guess when. 2020. You got it.

But remember – don’t you dare say Minneapolis is in a death spiral.

While I wish the folks at Hell’s Kitchen all the best, after some of their wokiness, I can’t help but wonder if the wolves aren’t circling the door.

Black owned detailing shops, immigrant owned restaurants and Vietnamese run nail salons come and go constantly throughout Minnesota. They come and go without much comments from the gatekeepers of popular culture.

but high concept, restaurants, especially the ones that clean closely to the progressive narrative? They get saturation media coverage, coming and going.

“Common Roots”, a high concept restaurant in south Minneapolis, got breathless media coverage when it opened a few years back. And with a mission statement like this, it’s no wonder:

‘According to their website, the eatery was operated around the values of supporting local farmers, being environmentally sustainable and providing living wages and benefits for employees.’

With a set up like that, you know how the story ends, don’t you?

“While we dramatically reduced our monthly losses during the course of the year, the business still will end 2022 with a large financial loss. We are still only operating at roughly half the sales we did prior to the pandemic. Our margins were thin in good times, but there’s absolutely no possibility of the budget working at anywhere near the volume we are at now,” Schwartzman wrote.

And I’m sure there’s no link, no way, no, how, between the fact that principal collided with reality:

He added that last week he was informed that staff wanted to unionize, which forced him to “take a fresh look at the overall state of the business.”

“I fully support the labor movement and would have loved being able to run a union business,” Schwartzman wrote, but said he “couldn’t commit to moving forward if I didn’t have confidence I would be able to keep the business open under all the very many different strains the business is under.”

Huh.

So, your principles have unsustainable prices?

Weird.

II had to double-check to see I hadn’t clicked onto the Babylon Bee by accident.

Alas, no.

Minneapolis, reacting to the latest round of retail closures, is starting a – I swear, I’m not making this up – “Vibrant Downtown Storefronts Workgroup” to try to make downtown, for lack of a better term, suck less:

Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey convened a “Vibrant Downtown Storefronts Workgroup” this week following a string of recent high-profile closures.

“Cities that see the most success post-pandemic won’t cling to the old ways that are now changed forever,” Frey said in a press release. “Here in Minneapolis, we will step boldly into the future, guided by the top experts in our region, prepared to innovate and adapt. Minneapolis has always been a hub of commerce and innovation, and I am confident that this workgroup will help ensure we continue carrying that legacy forward.”

The workgroup will be co-chaired by Steve Cramer, president and CEO of the mpls downtown council, and Gabrielle Grier, managing director of Juxtaposition Arts.

So – downtown is starting a vibrant storefronts working group but downtown is back and it never really left and if you say otherwise you probably drive a minivan and live in Maple Grove.

The hits keep coming for Minneapolis, as more restaurants  are calling it quits:

In Minneapolis alone, a number of long-standing institutions have called it quits. Rock Bottom Brewery, Seven Steakhouse and Sushi, Williams Pub and Peanut Bar, Amore Uptown and Stella’s Fish Cafe to name a few.

Some of them date back to long before I moved to the Cities – in this case, Asia Chow Mein in Columbia Heights:

“It was very hard to decide that,” Ng said. “At first, I was going to have my son take over, but now with so many obstacles and so many unknowns in this industry, I just hate for him to take over and he will be struggling like we have the last three years.”

Winnie said what served as a mold for success the prior generation, is one that no longer fits.

“The American dream maybe is for our parents,” Winnie said. “Because they think, immigrate here, they will make a better living, a better education for the kids. But I really don’t know what the outcome would be if we were to stay. I still have cousins and people back home and they’re doing really good too, you know?”

Ng said she is grateful for the sacrifice that her and Tim’s parents made. She recognizes the difficulty of moving to America, without speaking English, with the hopes of providing a better future for their children. She admired that they took the time to learn English, to navigate American cities, to learn how to walk in the snow, to learn to love eating American food.

In completely unrelated news, Downtown merchants and other leaders are trying to figure out what to do to revive downtown…

…which is back,and also never went away and has no crime or vacancy problem, and if you think it does you’re a rube from Waconia or Maple Grove.

How certain is the DFL that at least a plurality of Minnesota voters just aren’t very good at logic, civics or critical thinking?

Sure enough that they’re treating the $17 Billion “Surplus” a big win for progressive governance, and proof of some divine mandate:

What it actually is, of course, is a combination of:

• BIllions of dollars in federal Covid stimulus dollars
• The normal Minnesota DFL overtaxation…
• …with receipts driven up by inflation in the cost of the goods being taxed
• All that taxation and inflation going on over an epipandemic surge in stimulus-swollen consumer spending

Mark my words – and I have marked them myself, with “to dos” on my calendar on the first Mondays ijn December of 2024 and 2026: the following will happen:

• The DFL will turn that “$217.6 Billion in Surplus” into permanent spending
• The economy will slow into recession (as even the DFL’s cheerleaders in their bespoke press are starting to observe).
• Without the Covid stimuli, and with the economy contracting, tax receipts will crash again.
• The state will have a multibillion dollar deficit by 2026, probably 2024.

We’ll check back on this.  Oh, yes we will. 

A bar and restaurant explicitly aimed at revitalizing Downtown, and at “bringing Minneapolis together”,as a “place of healing for people” as one of its owners said, and overturning the image of downtown Minneapolis as a crime-ridden area enmeshed in a death spiral, has…

…oh, do I even need to finish the sentence?

I mean, let a thousand lights shine and all. It takes more gumption to try to open a restaurant downtown than I, for one, have.

But some of this stuff just seems to be the cosmic equivalent of taping a “kick me” sign on your back. The “Baghdad Bob” vibe alone was just tempting Murphy’s Law…

In March, a bartender at Ties Lounge & Rooftop told Alpha News that downtown Minneapolis is “very, very safe,” even though the city had released data at the time showing increased thefts, gunshot victims, and assaults in the area compared to the previous year.

…even if crime, and downtown’s eroding status as a destination, didn’t do it first.

Remember Compact Fluorescent Bulbs?

Government and the expert class all but brought them to your house and forced you to change out incandescent bulbs at gunpoint. Government tried to jam them down with by force of law, notwithstanding their cost (to purchase, and to dispose of), and their many other drawbacks.

And then, just about the time the jamdown was complete, the free market came up with the LED bulb: cheaper, better light, easier to dispose of (and they last longer, so there’s less need to dispose of them) and they use even less energy.

Point, free market!

That same expert class is saying we need to switch to electric vehicles to “save the planet”.

Steven Hayward at Breitbart spells out how there’s no rational way to look at this as anything but returning the world to feudalism.

We’re already getting there, under “unusual” (for the moment) circumstances.

Of course, yet again, the free market may well have a better answer – more sustainable (especially if society kicks its unscientific superstition about nuclear power), more affordable, and capable of keeping the world, not just the top 10% of it, mobile. More on this in the future.

Watch to see how the would-be ruling class tries to gundeck hydrogen power.

If proclamations made with muted, Minnesotan gusto were correlated with economic results, Jacob Frey’s exhortations would have downtown Minneapolis humming along like Dallas.

Alas, they do not. Some of downtown’s signature office towers are ailing financially:

 The 30-story LaSalle Plaza in downtown Minneapolis is scheduled to go to auction next week after the previous owner, the Teachers’ Retirement System of the State of Illinois, avoided foreclosure by transferring the building to its lender, Northwest Mutual.

Nearby Fifth Street Towers is facing the same fate and may also go back to its lender this month, according to Axios’ sources who were not authorized to discuss the matter.

And it’s not just your garden-variety class-AAAAA office space. It’s the big daddy of all the downtown office buildings (emphasis added):

Real estate analytics firm Trepp is keeping tabs on IDS Center — the city’s most iconic office tower — due to a 77% occupancy rate and the loss of Nordstrom Rack from Crystal Court, said senior managing director Manus Clancy

Rumors of downtown’s non-demise appear to be premature.

I can’t be the only one to have read/seen this NPR piece on controlling the cost of the Thanksgiving meal and thought it read like early-seventies Pravda, can I?

The article concocts “replacements” for the main components of the traditional Thanksgiving dinner:

Turkey is by far the most expensive thing on the table. Turkey prices have risen about 50% in the last two years, largely because of production slowdowns and an outbreak of avian flu [and, of course, trillions of dollars poured into the economy – a fact NPR goes to great lengths to avoid talking about. Ed]. On average, a 16-pound bird will run you $28.96 and stuffing (prices are up about 70%) will run you $3.88.

NPR Global Economics Correspondent Stacey Vanek Smith decided she would stick with meat for the main dish (many vegetarian options are cheaper), even though that’s not easy. Meat prices have risen significantly across the board: Beef, chicken, fish and even Spam are all pricey. So Stacey opted for pork. Specifically: bacon.

Stacey’s local grocery store was selling family packs of bacon for just $4 apiece. And, of course, a little bacon goes a long way.

Instead of stuffing, Stacey sliced some tomatoes — a relative bargain that she hoped could be put to use with leftovers to create a new holiday tradition: The Thanksgiving BLT.

The worse news: it’s not the their worst idea.

They took a photo – and I swear, this is not a Babylon Bee spoof:

This article alone could be a Casus Belli for a second civil war.

Fleshing out my first thoughts on the most recent election:

In Minnesota, the age-old wisdom prevails: money talks, bullshit walks. Tim Walz is sputtering fool, but he will be governor for the next four years. Unless his A1C level approaches triple digits, it’s highly likely he’ll complete his term and step aside for another sideshow act once he passes his sell-by date, some time around 2027. The DFL has the money and the infrastructure to control this state for the foreseeable future and the GOP has nothing. The DFL proved they could elect any droolbucket with a brand name when they pushed Mark Dayton across the line in 2010 and 2014. A guy with Walz’s skillset and mien wouldn’t get beyond middle management for any respectable company in the state, but he’s won twice. We can see all see it for what it is, but it doesn’t matter in the slightest — for the fourth election running, the DFL showed Team Rocks and Cows their ass. I don’t doubt they’ll find another standard bearer who is (a) absurd and (b) likely to win in 2026.

Keith Ellison is corrupt as the day is long, a 30-year grifter. He let a $250 million fraud run without interruption for the better part of two years. He’s now won statewide office twice. We’re pretty far gone if he can’t be defeated. I don’t doubt Jim Schultz is a competent lawyer, but his affect was of a guy who doesn’t get out of the conference room nearly enough and he was too nice a guy to run against a bully. To take the AG’s office back, the Republicans need a crusading litigator type who can prosecute the prosecutor and expose the rot within. There has to be one of those out there.

On the national level, it has to be said: Donald Trump didn’t help. He was and continues to be horribly wronged by what he’s gone through at the hands of his persecutors. And since civic education in this country is essentially dead in the water, most citizens can’t recognize that Trump is living example of why the Founders were against bills of attainder. Having said that, Trump will never get a sympathetic audience. He’s an obnoxious boor and he can’t get past his own solipsism; if he had even a scintilla of self-awareness, he might understand where he is, but we’ve been watching him for well over 40 years and that’s not in his skill set. Trump fancies himself the indispensable man, the conquering hero, but if he sincerely loves his nation, he’d recognize that martyrdom is a better career move. Not a chance in hell he’ll accept his fate, though.

Aside from the utter domination of Ron DeSantis in Florida, election results did not go well as one might have expected. Even so, the Republicans could still flip the House and the Senate. Based on reports from Arizona and Nevada, the Republicans could get over the line despite the Fetterman debacle in Pennsylvania. It appears likely that Adam Laxalt will win his seat in Nevada and there’s reason to believe Blake Masters may squeak by with Kari Lake becoming the governor in Arizona. Meanwhile, Herschel Walker will be going to a runoff in Georgia and has a good chance of prevailing this time. Even if the Senate ends up 50/50 again, I can imagine Joe Manchin may try to cross the aisle to save his ass in 2024. What will be interesting is whether Mitch McConnell would want him. I am not convinced McConnell enjoys being majority leader; he has more opportunities for self-enrichment in his current position.

Meanwhile, the Donks own the next two years. And they are going to hate that. There is still an urgent need for them to ease out Biden before too long, but they aren’t going to have an easy path to removing him, unless they decide to use Hunter Biden’s depredations as the pretext. Still, they will need a plausible successor. Kamala Harris impresses no one. Gavin Newsom is an empty suit. Pete Buttigieg? I don’t think so. Maybe it will be time for President Fetterman.