The Democrats are desperate for Elon Musk’s downfall

Who was the biggest loser of Tuesday night’s Wisconsin Supreme Court special election? You might think it was the defeated candidate, former Republican attorney general Brad Schimel. But the Democrats and most of the media would have you believe it was Elon Musk. 

Musk dished out $20 million in the hope of helping Schimel beat Dane County judge Susan Crawford. At a rally in Green Bay last week, Musk gave out two $1 million checks to attendees and put on the state’s trademark “cheesehead” hat. Yet even with all that cheddar, Crawford handily defeated Schimel.

Given the thrashing the Democrats took in November, it shouldn’t come as a surprise that this victory, in the most expensive race of its kind, is serving as a much-needed boost to the party’s spirits. Amid all the excitement, though, they could be taking away the wrong message. 

A triumphant Crawford told her crowd of supporters, “I never could have imagined that I’d be taking on the richest man in the world for justice in Wisconsin.” Before proudly adding, “And we won.”

The AP posited that while Schimel lost to Crawford, “in a way the real loser of the election was billionaire Elon Musk.” CNN argued that the loss was a warning sign for the GOP about Musk’s campaign role. Yet it was Politico that poured kerosene on the burning Tesla the morning, with a “scoop” about the President reassuring members of his inner circle that Musk would be stepping back in the coming weeks.

“Musk’s looming exit comes as some Trump administration insiders and many outside allies have become frustrated with his unpredictability and increasingly view the billionaire as a political liability, a dynamic that was thrown into stark relief Tuesday when a conservative judge Musk vocally supported lost his bid for a Wisconsin Supreme Court seat by ten points,” Rachael Bade wrote. 

The story was embraced by all those who had been anxiously awaiting the demise of the Trump-Musk bromance. Unfortunately for the anti-Musk brigade, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt immediately pushed back on the Politico “scoop,” going as far as to call it garbage. 

“Elon Musk and President Trump have both *publicly* stated that Elon will depart from public service as a special government employee when his incredible work at DoGE is complete,” she posted on X.

Bade’s story framed her nugget about Trump’s words as if she were the first to reveal that Elon’s departure was imminent. But Fox News had it first: “Elon said in his interview with Bret Baier that he’d be stepping away next month and apparently no one in DC media noticed it because they don’t pay attention to actual news,” contributor Ben Domenech pointed out.

So why the pile-on? It’s convenient for Musk’s detractors to frame the Wisconsin race as a referendum on the Republican billionaire. (Of course, Democrat-backing billionaires are to be embraced.)

It could be that Elon’s antics were a turn-off for Trump voters who otherwise would have come out in droves for Schimel. Or is it more likely, as Senator Ron Johnson suggested, that Musk was a net positive for Schimel even if he wasn’t able to get him over the finish line?

Johnson pointed out that the conservatives had a good showing for an election in April but that the Democratic “base is ginned up.” He added, “They’re over-the-top upset that Donald Trump won, and this is the kind of way they’re lashing out and responding.” 

In order to bring out voters, both sides of this Wisconsin Supreme Court race spent big money – $98.6 million in total. Musk explained on X that he thought the election would decide the trajectory of not only the United States but perhaps Western civilization. Meanwhile, Crawford’s camp emphasized the high stakes with ads consistently focusing on abortion rights hanging in the balance. 

The hyperbole is nothing new. Every election for the last decade has been described as the “most important one of our lifetime.” And the inflamed rhetoric typically tends to negatively impact the party in power. Democrats and the mainstream media are so hell bent on interpreting the race as a rejection of Elon Musk that they are forgetting that these off-cycle elections are often an early rebuke of the incumbency. 

Rather than focusing on what worked in Wisconsin, the Democrats are going all in Elon Musk. There was another influential Republican that they let live in their heads rent-free. That didn’t work out too well.