The Elon Musk experiment looks like a political failure
The big storyline coming out of Tuesday’s elections was that Elon Musk’s decision to insert himself into the Wisconsin Supreme Court race looks like a massive unforced error. Republicans not only lost the race by 10 points, but they actually did better in the race that Musk didn’t play or spend heavily in: state schools superintendent.
Musk spent political capital that’s already in short supply for him, and it turned out to be counterproductive, if anything.
This has led to all kinds of speculation about what happens to Musk from here. Politico has even reported that President Donald Trump told his Cabinet that Musk will soon depart his high-profile role, with the White House offering something of a non-denial denial.
But whatever happens next, the writing has been on the wall for some time that the Elon Musk experiment is failing politically. Tuesday’s elections just made it so Republicans could no longer ignore what was in front of their faces.
We’ve written before in this space about Musk’s declining poll numbers. And that decline has continued apace in recent weeks.
To wit:
- The last three high-quality polls to test Musk’s image - from Reuters-Ipsos, AP-NORC and Marquette University Law School - all showed him about 20 points underwater. The most recent one, released Wednesday by Marquette, showed Americans dislike him by a 60 percent to 38 percent margin.
- Reviews of Musk’s stewardship of the U.S. DOGE Service, which has spearheaded large and abrupt cuts to the federal government, are little better. Marquette showed people disapproved of his handling of that job 58 percent to 41 percent. A CBS News-YouGov poll this weekend showed 55 percent of Americans said Musk had “too much” say over federal worker firings (vs. just 14 percent who wanted more Musk). And a CNN poll last month showed more than 6 in 10 Americans said Musk lacked both the experience and judgment to change the way government works.
- Even many Republicans have been alienated. More than 20 percent of them viewed Musk unfavorably in both the Reuters-Ipsos poll and the AP-NORC poll. In the CBS-YouGov poll, 23 percent said he had too much influence.
- And perhaps most politically troubling for Republicans, Musk has become a lightning rod in decidedly the wrong way. The Reuters-Ipsos and Marquette polls show strongly negative views of him outpaced strongly positive ones by more than a 2-to-1 margin, with close to half of Americans strongly disliking him.
In other words, there are more than twice as many people out there who really don’t like Musk as those who really like him. That’s hardly a recipe for political success. In fact, they’re the kind of numbers that would normally make you persona non grata on the campaign trail.
But there was Musk, playing the most prominent role of anybody - including the candidates - late in a Wisconsin race that became the first major referendum on Trump.
Signs of this failed experiment haven’t been limited to poll numbers.
There is, of course, the tanking of Musk’s car brand, Tesla. Since Trump’s inauguration 2½ months ago, the automaker has lost one-third of its stock value. That has culminated in an extraordinary and ethically suspect effort by the White House and its political allies to seek to promote and rescue the business of the world’s wealthiest man, like so many car salespeople.
(Tellingly, Tesla’s stock rose on Wednesday - with the increase tracing almost exactly to the moment Politico reported Trump had said Musk would soon be out.)
But the biggest reason this experiment has failed is that Americans don’t seem at all interested in buying something else that Musk is selling: his massive federal government cuts.
The pollster YouGov in recent days tested 30 Trump proposals and policies. The five most unpopular ones were all cuts to federal funding and government jobs and services.
And some of them appeared to be things that almost nobody was truly asking for. For instance, 51 percent strongly opposed laying off 80,000 workers at the Department of Veterans Affairs, while just 6 percent strongly supported that. And 53 percent strongly opposed cuts to HIV prevention, vs. just 6 percent who strongly support them.
Adding to Musk’s problems, even the draconian and abrupt cuts he has been able to make - when they haven’t been blocked by the courts for their dubious legality - have barely put a dent in government spending. The reality of the federal government is that unless you’re willing to touch entitlement programs or military spending, you’re not going to get very far.
So Musk and DOGE routinely claim massive spending cuts that didn’t actually add up. They’ve claimed more than $100 billion in cuts, but they’ve routinely fudged the numbers and misstated how government contracts work.
In other words, Musk has played with political fire for relatively little monetary benefit.
The dilemma for fiscal conservatives who want to cut government has long been that the broad concept of cuts is popular, but nobody wants their own ox gored. It’s why the bipartisan deficit commission launched under President Barack Obama crashed and burned. It’s why we have seen both parties balloon the national debt for decades.
What were the odds that a guy who had almost no experience in U.S. politics before signing up to support Trump last year would be the one to come in and tame such an obviously unruly beast?
It’s looking more and more like it’s actually Musk who has been tamed, by the long-standing realities of our politics, which apparently still exist in the Trump era.