Bonehead Strategy for Democrats

Affordability? Really, guys, that's the strong suit?

If whoever’s laying out the strategy for Democrats in 2026-28 were Old West gunslingers, they’d be toeless from shooting themselves in the foot.

Seriously, the winning strategy for the Democratic Party, the party that has yet to see a government program it didn’t want to fund x2 … is Affordability? Let’s think about that for a minute, and instead of going to the usual suspects of unaffordability — New York, Illinois, and California — let’s consider Minnesota.

A fine state by all accounts.

I can vouch for the Minnesota State Fair and the new Vikings football stadium. And, lest we forget, Garrison Keillor assures us it’s a place “where all the women are strong, all the men are good-looking, and all the children are above average.”

It’s also the home of my favorite wrestler/politician, Jesse “The Body” Ventura, as well as one of the more cartoonish politicians to hit the national stage in a while, Gov. Tim “Coach” Walz. This goes without mentioning SNL comedian Al Franken’s ill-fated stint as the state’s U.S. Senator.

Any state with voters quirky enough to elevate those three deserves a special kind of admiration.

But quirkiness aside, Minnesota, in all of its Hubert Humphrey ethos, has practiced progressive policy for the last 100 years. And what’s happened to the state in that time? Well, among other things, it’s become more expensive. Maybe not California expensive, but — uff-da — the sticker shock is real nonetheless.

Here’s a local news station in Minneapolis reporting:

If you received your property tax statement in the mail recently, chances are you didn’t like what you saw.

Data from preliminary property tax levies across the state show that Minnesotans could have to pay nearly $950 million more in property taxes next year. That would be a 6.9% increase from 2025.

Based on the current levies for 2026, counties are set to collect more than $4.54 billion in property taxes next year, an 8.1% increase from 2025; City property tax levies total over $4 billion for the first time, increasing 8.7% over 2025 levels; Townships are set to collect another $19 million, up 5.6%; School levies will total nearly $4.4 billion, a 5.8% increase from 2025; and special taxing district levies are set to increase by $24 million, a 4.6% jump.

I suppose the D thinkers planning out the next national election will try to say that places like Minnesota are more unaffordable because somehow it’s the fault of the federal government under the evil Donald Trump. But those tax hikes span decades, through Republican and Democratic presidents.

Seems sketchy to me also because by the time 2028 rolls around, Trump’s tariffs (if the courts allow) will have made a sizeable dent into the national debt and given all Americans a $2,000 tariff dividend to boot.

Meanwhile, Minnesotans will have seen two more years of near double-digit property tax increases tied directly to the policies of their own liberal mayors and governors.

So, affordability may sound like a good line of attack initially, but once voters start putting 2+2 together, I’m seeing a toe biting the dust.

And that’s the political news today, using Minnesota and Lake Wobegon as a backdrop. If you disagree with me, I’ll be at the Chatterbox Cafe in downtown Wobegon right after the Whippets baseball game. We can discuss it over some good coffee made by the nice Lutheran church ladies.

If you can convince me I’m wrong on this, I’ll eat a plate of lutefisk, a dish that time forgot and the decades cannot improve.

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Smart Move

Do you think someone in the Trump Administration is reading Properly Subversive and taking the advice contained therein? Probably not, but we are also not so bashful as to not point out that we advised them to do this in Sunday’s Stack.

The U.S. is set to lower tariffs on beef imports from Argentina after finalizing new trade agreements across South and Latin American countries. Tariffs will also be reduced on common grocery items, such as bananas and coffee, with the administration planning further reductions on certain fruit imports and citrus products. President Trump has ordered administration officials to identify foods not grown in the U.S. that could qualify for possible tariff exemptions.

Lucky Man

Here’s a press release from the California Lottery on their newest $5 million winner. It struck me odd that it took Edy Giron Ruiz 8 months to “fully claim” his winnings. Not sure what’s going on there, if anything.