Boston College historian and sub stacker Heather Cox Richardson comments on the Musk-Trump budget resolution meltdown: “Passing continuing resolutions to fund the government is usually unremarkable, but this fight showed some lines that will stretch into the future….First of all, it showed the unprecedented influence of billionaire private individual Elon Musk over the Republicans who in 2025 will control the United States government. Musk has a strong financial interest in the outcome of discussions, but House speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) said he had included Musk as well as President-elect Trump in the negotiation of the original bipartisan funding bill….Then Musk blew up the agreement by issuing what was an apparent threat to fund primary challengers to any Republican who voted for it. He apparently scuttled the measure on his own hook, since Trump took about thirteen hours to respond to his torpedoing it….Musk expressed willingness to leave the government unfunded for a month, apparently unconcerned that a shutdown would send hundreds of thousands of government workers deemed nonessential into temporary leave without pay. This would include about 800,000 civilian employees of the Pentagon, about 17,000 people from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), and those who staff the nation’s national parks, national monuments, and other federal sites….Federal workers considered essential would have to continue to work without pay. These essential workers include air traffic controllers and federal law enforcement officers. Military personnel would also have to continue to work without pay.”

At Common Dreams, Joseph Geevarghese, the executive director of Our Revolution, the nation’s largest grassroots-funded progressive organization, argues that “The core of that reform message” Democrats deploy should being with: “Banning Dark Money in Primaries: Working-class voters have no reason to trust a party whose primaries are shaped by billionaire-funded super PACs. Eliminating dark money ensures that our candidates win based on voter support, not corporate influence. We’ve seen too many examples where races are flooded with big money to crush popular (progressive) candidates….Investing in State Parties and Grassroots Organizing: The first step to rebuilding working-class coalitions is investing in organizing infrastructure—direct voter outreach based on authentic solutions and supporting grassroots leadership in every state. A 50-state strategy means strengthening state parties and empowering organizers, not handing millions to out-of-touch consultants….Committing to a Progressive Platform: To win back working families, Democrats must champion and deliver on the issues that impact their lives—Medicare expansion, living wages, affordable housing, union rights, and climate justice, to name a few. These policies are not only popular; they are essential to solving the economic pain fueling Trump’s appeal….Increasing Transparency and Accountability: For too long, DNC resources have been squandered on expensive media buys and elite political insiders. A reformed DNC must be accountable to its base and transparent about how it spends its resources—resources that belong to grassroots Democrats.”

Dustin Guastella, research associate at the Center for Working Class Politics and the director of operations for Teamsters Local 623, writes at The Guardian  that “it will not be enough for the left to protest the billionaire economy. An honest assessment of progressive liabilities is in order. Those on the left must confront the cultural elite that has pushed the party away from workers on all sorts of non-economic issues. While Trump and his billionaires won’t be able to adequately represent the economic interests of the working class, liberals must recognize that their party doesn’t represent their values. The Democrats captured by highly credentialed clerics has led them to embrace the cultural values of an aristocratic elite. From crime, to climate, to gender politics, and the border, mainstream liberal opinion is much further from the views of workers than many liberals are willing to admit. And this too is a class story….s the Democratic party transformed itself from the party of the New Deal to the party of Nafta it embraced a new constituency: progressive professionals. Since Bill Clinton, liberals presided over the offshoring of high-wage blue-collar jobs in manufacturing. They watched as abandoned factories, and the towns that once relied on them, slowly oxidized. As the Rust belt stretched across the heartland, Democrats helped to subsidize the growth of a new elite primarily concentrated on the coasts. They pushed for policies that pulled the economy away from blue-collar industries and toward more “dynamic” sectors primarily in information technologies.”

Guastella continues, “They fashioned a “new economy” through public policy, and attracted a new constituency as a result. They hoped that as high-wage jobs disappeared, they would be replaced by new high-tech careers; as the party lost blue-collar voters, they invested in white-collar professionals. They got what they wished for….the folkways, mannerisms, and tastes of salaried high-income professionals have come to define the party, and now serve as a powerful repellent for working-class voters. Indeed, not only has the embrace of the knowledge class led to the economic neglect of the working class but the aggressive advocacy of professional class cultural values has played a major role in pushing working-class voters away….Simply put, progressive elites have remade the party to reflect the cultural and aesthetic preferences of blue-blooded liberals, and then made these preferences the priority. Ironically, some highly educated Democrats now embody the definition of “conservative” in their defense of these “woke” priorities: they defend the status of the affluent and the educated, the stand for the preservation of a profoundly powerful elite. If Democrats have any hope of winning back working-class voters they will need to confront this liberal aristocracy as much as they protest the corporate money grab of Republican plutocrats….There is promising evidence that workers may be more progressive on economic issues than in the recent past, and in relation to their professional-class peers. As a forthcoming analysis from the Certified Workers’ Compensation Professional program shows, workers do embrace progressive economic positions. Meaning, those on the left have an opportunity to develop an appealing populist economic program. Such a program would confront the very structure of the job market, ending mass layoffs, automation, and offshoring. It would advocate for rebuilding the industrial heartland, providing high-wage jobs for workers at all levels of education, not just for professionals in “smart” coastal hubs. And it would seek to strengthen union rights, revitalize social programs, lower costs and improve education.”