Democracy's good night
Democrats finally put Trumpism 2.0 and Elon Musk to the test in the media and at the ballot box — and found some weaknesses
No fooling about it: April 1 was a good night for democracy in America.
Senator Cory Booker showed the Democratic Party how it’s done by finally seizing the news cycle and Americans’ attention (he got some 350 million likes on TikTok) with his record-breaking Senate floor speech.
Elon Musk, however, despite spending $25 million (the most money ever on a state judicial contest) and wearing a hat that only increased his head’s longstanding resemblance to cheese, lost as Democratic judge Susan Crawford prevailed by 10 points, holding onto her seat and the Wisconsin high court’s liberal majority.
Musk can’t dodge responsibility for this one. Crawford made the stakes of this contest very clear all along: she was running explicitly against the DOGE chieftain and his attempt to extend his coup to the state.
“As a little girl growing up in Chippewa Falls,” Crawford said in her victory speech, “I never could have imagined that I’d be taking on the richest man in the world for justice in Wisconsin. And we won.”
Is that cheese on a head, or a hat on top of cheese? You decide.
The reality is that Apartheid-era Elon is deeply unpopular as a human being, even putting aside the spectacle of a billionaire trying to buy an election in broad daylight, trying to blame his giant L on the invented manipulations of another billionaire.
“It was inevitable that a few Soros operatives would be in the audience,” Musk said after the protester was tossed out, referencing the billionaire investor George Soros. “Give my regards to George!”
So what does it all mean? Crawford’s victory isn’t a one-off, but the continuation of a trend towards the left in the purple state’s courts that got started in response to former Governor Scott Walker’s attempt to turn Wisconsin into a laboratory for autocracy. As Alex Burness points out over at Bolts:
Tuesday marked the third consecutive supreme court victory for Wisconsin liberals, who, prior to flipping the court in 2023, had been in the minority since at least 2008. That 2023 victory, by now-Justice Janet Protasiewicz, created a 4-3 liberal majority, but the retirement of longtime liberal Justice Ann Walsh Bradley this spring gave conservatives a shot to regain the majority. Crawford’s win keeps the margin intact.
That means all of Musk’s money simply had very little impact. The faux million–dollar giveaways, the outright vote buying. None of it made a difference.
Now, the news wasn’t all good, at least on the surface. But then dig a little deeper into the numbers: Democrats lost both special elections in Florida, for disgraced attorney general hopeful Matthew Gaetz’s and group chat and Gmail abuser’s Michael Waltz’s old seats. Yet, as Heather Cox Richardson argues, the Democratic challengers closed the gap significantly on November’s margins in both of these deeply red districts.
The people spoke today in special elections. Republican candidates in Florida won by about 14 points in each of two U.S. House races, but just five months ago, Republicans won those seats by 30 and 37 points. It appears that voters are angry at the Republican Party.
And what does that say about fighting the Trump–Musk regime? As Cory Booker said repeatedly during his Senate speech: “The power of the people is greater than the people in power.”
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And yesterday, 9 republicans stood up to Mike Johnson’s parliamentary manipulations on allowing proxy voting for new parents. They joined the democrats and one of the leaders resigned from the freedom caucus.
As Anat Shenker-Osorio says, “The many can defeat the money.”