Musk comes crashing down to earth

The world's richest man gambled big and lost in Wisconsin.

I hope everyone is still riding the high of yesterday’s big win in the Wisconsin Supreme Court race where Susan Crawford defeated Brad Schimel 55 to 45— an election with massive implications not just for the state, but the entire country. Let me explain.

First, it keeps intact the liberal bloc’s majority on the Wisconsin Supreme Court. That means that the fair maps that were finally signed into law last year will remain in place. And fair maps mean that Republicans cannot gerrymander themselves into power, which means that the people of Wisconsin are protected from extreme laws like the 1849 abortion ban, which Republicans would have immediately enacted had they retaken control. At least for now, some semblance of democracy has been preserved in the state. That matters.

But there’s an equally important consequence here. Elon Musk had been using the Wisconsin Supreme Court race as a proving ground, wherein he would dump tens of millions of dollars into the state - including in the form of million-dollar checks to coerce voters in a move Wisconsin Democrats chair Ben Wikler called a “blatant felony” - knowing full well that if this strategy worked, he could export it to the rest of the country. He already employed such a strategy in the presidential election, but Wisconsin is where he would learn whether it would work as the GOP’s silver bullet on the state level. Alas, it did not.

Granted, I’m under no delusions that Elon Musk will take his ball (and wallet) and go home, but let’s be clear about what it means. It means that his money is absolutely not a guarantee that Republicans will win. It means that our voices have a bigger impact than his bank account. But most importantly, it means that the momentum as we head toward 2026 is on the left. If we could win a race into which the richest man in the world just dumped in tens of millions of dollars, where the sitting president of the United States used the bully pulpit to promote the conservative candidate, and where Republican lawmakers and Senators used the full strength of their platforms to pit voters against Susan Crawford, then think about what that bodes for 2026 where Republicans will be forced to split their resources among dozens, if not hundreds, of battleground races.

What’s heartening - especially in a moment where there’s very little that we might consider hopeful - is that even with the rightwing media machine humming along, even with a massive asymmetry in the amount of money that the right has over the left, even with the GOP’s relentless pursuit of power and abuses of our government, the fact that the left overcame all of those forces and showed up and won means that maybe the situation isn’t as futile as we might think. Maybe our efforts to stay involved matter. Maybe engaging with our friends and families and neighbors and co-workers about the abuses occurring at the hands of these despots in government matters. Maybe continuing to fight the good fight matters. We can win - and will win - moving forward, but we have to want it. This week, we wanted it, and at least for now, our democracy is a just little bit stronger as the result of it.