Just 78 days into the second Trump administration, a potentially pivotal day has arrived. Today two elections in Florida will decide who replaces disgraced Congressman and failed DoJ nominee Matt Gaetz and former Congressman and current disgraced National Security Advisor (he of the Signal debacle) Michael Waltz. Trump won these districts by 37% and 30% margins, while Gaetz won the seat he’s vacating by 32%, and Waltz by 33%.
Those are important, but the race to replace a retiring liberal justice on Wisconsin’s Supreme Court is the main event. It would be important in any case because control of the courts—and therefore elections—hang in the balance. (Recall that a Republican Supreme Court allowed the GOP to gerrymander the state house so radically that, for example, when 53% of Wisconites voted for a Democratic state Representative in 2018, the party ended up winning win just 37% of the seats.)
But of course it means much more than that, since Elon Musk has decided to not just invest $20 million of his own dollars on conservative justice Matt Schimel’s campaign, but bribe voters with $100 checks and million-dollar lotteries. As a consequence, the election is less about the Wisconsin Supreme Court than it is a 50-50 state’s tolerance for Elon Musk and his oligarchic practices.
The Wisconsin GOP is breathtakingly corrupt, and their many acts of self-dealing were what allowed the Dems to retake the Supreme Court. The state has become a case study in modeling successful autogolpes, and conservatives have an outsized interest in returning to the good old days of post-democracy in the state.
Elon has, however, made the election about Elon, and that’s why this contest is so important. It is a trial run to see how the Musk effect works in practice. The Florida elections will measure Republican voters’ lassitude after these 78 days, and if the Dems are even competitive, it will signal a rejection of the Trump regime two and a half months in. But it’s a proxy referendum, since Trump isn’t on the ballot. Elon Musk basically is on the ballot in Wisconsin, however. From the New Yorker piece linked above:
“‘Eighty per cent of our canvassing interactions are about Musk,’ Matt Mareno, the chair of the Waukesha County Democratic Party, told me. The county is heavily Republican, but Mareno said that many people have expressed frustration that Musk is unelected and not accountable to anyone.”
Win or lose, the election isn’t about two Supreme Court justices—it’s about Elon’s power play.
Any election featuring these stakes would attract a media scrum ready to over-interpret the results. I am always wary, especially in the Trump era, of celebrating “turning points” before they’ve happened. Vibes, especially now, have zero correlation to reality. So why is this a pivotal day?
Let’s focus on Wisconsin, which carries 80% of the juice in today’s elections no matter what happens. (For Florida to really matter, the GOP will have to lose seats.) Elon has made the Wisconsin race too big to ignore: he wanted a referendum on himself and DOGE and Trump lI, and he engineered one. If Wisconsin voters reject his candidate, it will demonstrate: 1) that his personal toxicity is a greater factor than the benefit his money brings to a candidate, and 2) that in a free and fair election, the discontent is real and Democrats can ride it to a win. Obviously, if Schimel wins, it means more evidence that Musk’s enterprise is working apace to undermine democracy. This is a test case, sure to be repeated if it works.
The Dems are already rudderless, so losing in Wisconsin would seem likely to further confuse and enervate them. If they win, however, it will act as a five-alarm fire for the GOP. They already know that democracy is not in their interest, so a loss in Wisconsin will confirm their belief that the main barrier to success in free and fair elections is free and fair elections. Trump has already begun efforts to weaken elections, and he has recently discussed an illegal run for a third term. Ironically, a win in Wisconsin is likely to lead to faster and more lawless decay in elections, as Republicans wholly abandon winning majorities.
Finally, it’s important to remember that nothing is ever static. Most election coverage weirdly assumes only one actor. If X wins, Y will happen. (The endless discussion of the midterms as an election unaffected by the current administration is a case in point.) But what we actually know is the if X happens, many forces will react. Those rudderless Dems are showing the first signs of assembling a functional resistance. They will react to these elections, one way or another.
But so will the GOP. We have already seen how the House elections have affected Trump’s thinking: he pulled House member Elise Stefanik’s nomination as ambassador because he’s worried about losing the House. Elon has gotten so frantic because his lizard brain understands his precarity. His value to Trump and the GOP lies in his ability to help win elections. If he has become so toxic his presence, despite his vast and unprecedented spending, loses elections, his value plummets.
Trump has achieved a huge amount already. He has quickly become the most consequential president in living memory. But his success has come with costs, and each time he spends political capital, he puts it at risk. I don’t think it’s an accident that he scheduled his big tariff announcement to come after these elections. His popularity is falling as fast as the stock market, so these elections will free or constrain his hand, at least somewhat.
The war for control of American democracy will be fought over the course of countless smaller battles. Democracy doesn’t hang in the balance tonight. On the other hand, this is one of those moments that will matter. It will appreciably nudge the balance one way or the other. I plan to watch not just for the results, but the aftershocks that happen in both parties over the coming days.
The first thing to note is Trump’s tariff announcement tomorrow. Let’s see if he introduces more muscular, triumphalist tariffs, or subdued and perhaps symbolic ones. We can then compare those to the election results. That will be an interesting data point.
Of course, it’s Trump and the most chaotic and dumb administration in American history, so the politics are as always unpredictable. I do expect the real-world consequences of today’s election to affect them, though.
Let’s hope the blue team scores a big win.
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