Our forthcoming book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics. The second Trump administration is off to an ominous start.
Jonathan Chait at The Atlantic:
Trump would not be the first president to encounter economic turbulence. But he might become the first one to kill off a healthy economy through an almost universally foreseeable unforced error. The best explanation for why Trump is intent on imposing tariffs is that he genuinely believes they are a source of free money supplied by residents of foreign countries, and nobody can tell him otherwise. (Tariffs are taxes on imports, which economists agree are paid mostly by domestic consumers in the form of higher prices.).
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.
