Company of the Day: Troubled clothing store Old Navy:
On Tuesday, Old Navy announced it will pay its store employees to work the polls on Election Day. The company, which has 50,000-plus employees, said it is working with Civic Alliance, a nonpartisan coalition of businesses, and Power the Polls, an organization aimed at recruiting 250,000 poll workers “to ensure polling sites stay open and operate efficiently across the country” on Election Day. [Business Insider]
They are not unique, as other companies such as Tory Burch are also paying their employees to work at the polls. However, it’s worth noting for two reasons:
- Old Navy, in particular, has been in trouble for a few years, so this can be considered to be a promotional move on their part.
- But, since Republican Party fortunes are generally considered to be in an inverse relationship to the number of votes cast, this can also be considered a repudiation of President Trump and, generally, Republican policies. Without access to the boardrooms of these companies, it’s hard to say exactly what upsets the directors and executives of these companies, but candidates include the incompetency exhibited by the Republican, specific policies, such as deregulation, a general dismay at the business atmosphere engendered by Republican leadership, or even the mercantilistic preferences that have appeared from time to time.
We’ve seen other rebuffs of the Republicans, as a number of spacious sports venues have been made available as polling locations, particularly in states where vote by mail may be suspect. While those moves have, in part, been prompted by their employees that are their lifeblood, i.e., the players, in the Old Navy case the employees don’t have that kind of leverage.
Which makes this more impressive.
I’ve been thinking we’re seeing the disintegrative phase of the American Empire, as President Trump’s clash with the Democrats and, in actual deed, reality, appears to align with Professor’s observation that the disintegrative phase of historical empires includes internecine warfare in the ruling class. Perhaps the corporate world has recognized that leadership by a group determined to hold onto power, as evidenced by rampant gerrymandering, voter suppression, and Trump’s own conflict with reality[1], will not lead to continued prosperity, but into an uncertain future inherent in having third-raters leading government.
And, by moves such as these, we can evade, or at least delay, that expected internecine warfare. I suppose it’ll depend on how the great American Political Middle responds to extremists on both ends of the spectrum. My ideal ending? A whole lot of white supremacists, boogaloo boys, and allied groups stripped of their weapons and sitting in jail, and, for the extremist left, those who are violent – not many, but there will be a few – jailed, while the intellectual extreme left defanged through debate and fortitude by the liberals and rational conservatives.
Gotta love my fantasies. Why have bad ones?
1 If I have to give examples of any of this, my reader needs to get caught up on the news on their own time.
