A Pretty Good Night for the Democrats - A really bad night for Elon Musk

[Celerity]

https://prospect.org/politics/2025-04-02-pretty-good-night-democrats-wisconsin-supreme-court-elections-musk/



If you’re a Republican House member, how do you tell Elon Musk—that most manic of moneybags—that his support in next year’s midterm election would be greatly appreciated, but best invested, well, anywhere else? Would that piss him off? Would it make him back a primary challenger who’ll have even less of a chance to win in November? Isn’t there some way to quietly take his money without a single voter noticing? Naaah.

The odor of Musk helped drag MAGA judge Brad Schimel down to defeat last night in the race for the swing seat on Wisconsin’s Supreme Court. To be fair, Schimel’s defeat was overdetermined, as the other issue in the race against liberal judge Susan Crawford was whether the court would uphold abortion rights (Crawford’s position) or have the state revert to the abortion ban it enacted in 1849, so early in the state’s history that the German social democrats who flocked there after the defeat of the 1848 revolutions in Germany, hadn’t even arrived yet. (A distinctly abolitionist bunch, the Germans also helped found the anti-slavery Republican Party in 1854, and their descendants managed to elect socialist mayors of Milwaukee throughout most of the 20th century.)

Crawford won big last night, not only piling up huge margins in Milwaukee and Madison, but keeping Schimel’s margins down in Milwaukee’s predominantly white, middle- and upper-middle-class suburbs, where the abortion issue doubtless moved some Republican women to cross over and vote for her. But Musk, despite the $22 million he plowed into the campaign for Schimel, despite his promised reward of cash prizes for Schimel voters, played what may have been the decisive role in boosting Crawford’s turnout. Looking at what has happened to Twitter after Musk purchased it, and at the damage he’s now inflicted on Tesla, many Wisconsinites prudently decided that selling the state to Musk would lead to a sharp drop in their fortunes, not to mention their self-respect.

Democrats can also take comfort in the margins by which their candidates in two Florida congressional districts lost in last night’s special elections. In the Daytona district previously represented by Trump’s national security adviser and user of commercial technology for state secrets Mike Waltz, Democrat Josh Weil lost to Republican Randy Fine by 14 percentage points. In November, Waltz had carried that district by 33 percentage points, and Trump by 30.

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[GusBob]

1. This really was a referendum on Musk

I knew the minute Brad knelt before him he was gonna lose

[gab13by13]

2. This really was a referendum on Trump

and Project 2025. Musk is just a pump handle with no official title.

Krasnov would love to lay all the blame on Musk, I am not fooled.

[Alice Kramden]

3. "The odor of Musk"

LOL

[kansasobama]

4. Dems are making a mistake

By constantly railing against Musk and not Trump-Musk. Once Musk does his job, he will leave and Trump will gain in polls. Watch out!

[allegorical oracle]

5. Was always skeptical of that "$1M check to voters" gambit.

Then it turned out the two WI check recipients were insiders -- the male is/was associated with Ron Johnson, and the female is/was a longtime Repug activist.''

My theory is that neither will actually receive the million. It was a ploy aimed at testing the justice system to see if such pay-offs would be stopped.

The court failed in WI, so future pay-to-vote activities may continue.