April 4: Keep Bashing Musk Til He’s Gone
This week’s election results in Wisconsin had a pretty clear message for Democrats, as I explained at New York:
The most tiresome intra-Democratic debate of them all soon reached crisis levels after Donald Trump’s 2024 election victory. Should the “party of the people” focus on the threat to democratic institutions MAGA authoritarians most definitely pose? Or should they instead pursue lost non-college-educated voters via the ancient “populist” formula of class warfare over purely economic issues? The debate has often become very personal, with “populists” tending to dismiss arguments about democracy as elitist mumbo jumbo unintelligible to working stiffs who just want to see the money, and people frightened about fascism worrying that Americans will cheerfully sell out our heritage of liberty for $2 a gallon gas.
Fortunately, and just in the nick of time, a figure has emerged at the highest levels of government who can instantly unite “populists” and “defenders of democracy.” That would be Elon Musk, who is simultaneously the richest man on earth (and in modern history) and an even greater threat to democratic institutions than Trump. He is, moreover, via the DOGE initiative, waging aggressive war on public-sector programs that restrain his tiny class of corporate predators and benefit the general public while violating every constitutional norm imaginable. And suffusing this entire assault on the people and the institutions to which Democrats should feel loyalty is a nihilistic personality exhibiting some of the worst impulses of the human race: narcissism, messianism, ethnocentrism, worship of power and technology, and a testosterone-poisoned lust for combat and destruction. It’s as though Bruce Wayne had decided to become the Joker instead of Batman.
Terrifying as Musk is, Democrats should thank their lucky stars that he doesn’t simply operate in the background of the MAGA movement, financing Trump’s antics but otherwise remaining anonymous. No: He has insisted on a very public place on the stages of politics, commerce, and culture, rivaled only by his benefactor and enabler in the White House. And the more people see of him, the less they seem to like him.
This week’s judicial election in Wisconsin shows what happens when this peculiar man makes himself the center of attention in a popularity contest not limited to his sycophants on X. The most polarized electorate in the entire nation fed by the most expensive campaign ever to revolve around judges decided by a healthy margin that they did not want Elon Musk in charge of their destiny (much less the “destiny of humanity” he so fatuously claimed was at stake). And better yet, the dispirited ranks of Democrats turned out disproportionately at the polls in the first electoral test since last November’s disaster.
It’s now clear that so long as Musk is the most powerful figure in the administration and the living symbol of Trump 2.0, Democrats should make Musk-bashing even more of a daily preoccupation than it has already become. Populists can draw fresh attention to the very real class implications of DOGE’s assault on corporate regulation and on practical services like Social Security offices accessible to old folks and medical facilities that can keep middle-class people alive. Defenders of democratic institutions can continue to expose (and attack in courts) the arrogant pretense that self-appointed engineers who brag about their destructive intentions should be entrusted with “reforming” government. And everyone can keep exposing the deeply sinister tech-bro worldview Musk and his accomplices exemplify, aimed at converting the United States of America into a privately held corporate oligarchy governed by insanely wealthy elites deploying AI at will and treating life itself as a video game in which the losers are the rest of us.
Musk-bashing won’t solve all the problems facing Democrats. They still need to regain public trust about their own values and competence. For one thing, DOGE’s very existence remains a terrible indictment of the contempt for government that is now so epidemic, and that Democrats have for so long either ignored or tried to buy off with popular benefits; they need their own credible “government reform” agenda and the determination to carry it out.
But make no mistake: Elon Musk is a political gift, particularly if his ego and Trump’s reliance on his support mean he will insist on keeping himself front and center, showing up at Cabinet meetings and MAGA rallies alike while indulging his endless glossolalia on X. So long as he remains the face of Trump 2.0, Democrats would be wise to make sure that face is the first thing Americans think of when they survey the political landscape. If Musk and DOGE crash or are subdued by the jealous god in the Oval Office (as some reports suggest Trump has signaled may happen), that is a very good thing in itself and a worthy goal for the opposition.
Let me add, for a bit of fun but also to point to something quite serious and relevant here.
Richard Hofstadter in “Anti-intellectualism in American Life” details the contrast in American mythology between the “intellectual” and the “practical man”. This is a very old dichotomy but it deeply marks the American psyche still.
A particularly illuminating example can be found in the Walt Disney version of Washington Irving’s Legend of Sleepy Hollow. Note the contrasting physicality of the two males, the easy fright to which Ichabod is susceptible, and the bookishness of Ichabod contrasted with the practical resourcefulness of Brom. Ichabod is, of course, chased out of town (presumably, he goes back east)and Brom gets the girl. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PDrnPqQtpxw&feature=PlayList&p=5C1DB69D66041476&playnext=1&playnext_from=PL&index=5
James
Thanks kindly for the response.
“Wooden”, yes. But calmly self-certain and fatherly (if stern) might be another way to understand Cheney’s presentation today. Few on the right presently can pull that off with credibility. Certainly not Jindal, nor Cantor, nor Limbaugh, nor even McCain. Gingrich probably gets closest but then he speaks and things kind of go to hell.
We know this framing, of course, as the right has beat citizens over the head with it for decades. See Kristol’s blog today where he contrasts Obama as “a young Senator” to Cheney as “a grown up”, “a statesman”, “a chief executive”. Fatherly protector versus flighty, immature, feminine liberals. And today, as always, this comes packaged with the projection of dire, deadly threats in waiting. As Drew Westen and others have advised, this “activates peoples’ fear of mortality which inherently pushes them to the right.”
We assumed we were done with this amoral, authoritarian character but whatever combination of personal pathologies and need to dominate others whirl about within him, it seems that the unique circumstances of the present time are going to keep him in our lives. But he’s not a stupid man and he knows how to play this game. We ought not to submisunderestimate him, I think.
Now that the preliminary media coverage is in, I unfortunatly suspect that you are right in thinking that Cheney succeeded in providing the Republicans with a far better spokesman than Limbaugh. His delivery was wooden but he staked out a “strong on defense” position that is significantly more popular than are the Republicans as a party.
Gentlemen
My take here is not so unambiguously positive.
It seems to me that Cheney’s ascension into the spotlight is achieving a strategic positive for the Republicans at this point. My impression is that the ‘face’ of the party has changed significantly (and purposefully) over the last couple of months. I don’t think we’ll see Limbaugh challenging Obama to a debate again (or otherwise attempting to lift his profile past the red meat/radio sphere) and I suspect that is because the smarter people in the party hierarchy have grasped that the leadership vacuum that pushed Limbaugh forward could not continue without devastating consequences for the party’s future electoral chances. I don’t have figures on the frequency of media appearances by Fleischer, Perino, Rove and others from the Bush administration but my impression is that this frequency increased at the time Carville and Begala were working to elevate Limbaugh’s status.
Or, to say this with brevity, I think the party biggies understood that the only Republicans on the horizon with the media manipulation skills and institutional connections to facilitate such manipulation is the Bush administration crowd. And that Cheney is one of the few people who might be able to pull off the “leader” role presently.
In asian martial arts, where there are specific techniques taught for dealing with multiple opponents, one fundamental set of instructions is a series of pivots and twists to insure that one never faces more then a single opponent at at time.
The rule is “never battle ten opponents at once – battle opponents one by one ten times.
Yesterday, Obama faced ten opponents. Today he faced one. fine footwork indeed.