{"id":621849,"date":"2026-06-20T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2026-06-20T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/buglecall.org\/?p=621849"},"modified":"2026-06-20T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"2026-06-20T00:00:00","slug":"elon-musk-vs-the-democrats-outcomes-vs-process","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/buglecall.org\/?p=621849","title":{"rendered":"Elon Musk Vs The Democrats: Outcomes Vs Process"},"content":{"rendered":"

Elon Musk Vs The Democrats: Outcomes Vs Process<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

Authored by Stephen Soukup via American Greatness,<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n

Years ago, when my oldest son was a Boy Scout, he was asked to write a report\/make a presentation on a modern American \u201chero.\u201d He chose Elon Musk, and I, of course, rolled my eyes so hard they nearly popped out of my head.<\/strong><\/p>\n

I knew Musk was a successful businessman, but I also knew that he was both an advocate for and a seasoned manipulator of Big Government. Tesla, for example, received a $465 million Department of Energy loan in 2010 under the Advanced Technology Vehicles Manufacturing program, a Big Government scheme to encourage private companies to advance Big Government priorities (namely, fighting Climate Change by reducing carbon emissions). Likewise, Tesla was, at least at the time, commercially viable only because of the more than $1 billion ($7,500\/vehicle) in federal EV tax credits claimed by its buyers. Without government greasing the proverbial wheels a bit, Tesla would have struggled to get the literal wheels rolling out the sales floor doors.<\/p>\n

Moreover, Musk publicly acknowledged that he voted for Obama and presented himself as part of the \u201cgreen\u201d business revolution, men and women who could and would \u201cdo well by doing good.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n

My, how things change.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Just a short decade later, Elon Musk is, indeed, regarded as a genuine hero by most on the American political Right\u2014and by anyone who favors free enterprise\u2014while he is loathed and actively derided by his former friends and allies on the Left.<\/strong> Especially this past week, after the SpaceX IPO made him the world\u2019s first trillionaire, the Democrats and other leftists who once loved him, partnered with him, and sang his praises loudly have shown nothing but contempt for him and hatred for his inarguable business success. As the controversial Democratic Senate nominee from Maine, Graham Platner, ominously\u00a0put it<\/a>, \u201cElon Musk just became the world\u2019s first trillionaire. Let\u2019s make sure he\u2019s also the last.\u201d<\/p>\n

How, exactly, did we get here?<\/strong><\/p>\n

The biggest part of the story is Musk\u2019s own political evolution, which proceeded slowly, in stages, but was accelerated at a handful of inflection points.<\/p>\n

Of these inflection points, two stand out among the others.<\/p>\n

The first of these took place during President Biden\u2019s first year in office. <\/strong><\/u><\/p>\n

Biden and his administration were knee-deep in pushing a new, far more aggressive climate agenda.<\/strong> On his first day in office, Biden issued 17 executive orders, several of which addressed climate change and other environmental matters. Most notably, he signed an order to reinstate the nation\u2019s participation in the Paris Accords, thereby placing a policy-making emphasis on electrification and decarbonization. A big part of that effort\u2014as would be evinced in the \u201cInflation Reduction Act\u201d passed the following year\u2014was pushing the purchase of electric vehicles. To that end, on August 4, 2021, Biden hosted an EV \u201csummit\u201d at the White House. He invited three EV makers\u2014General Motors, Ford, and Stellantis\u2014to watch him sign\u00a0another executive order<\/a>, this one mandating that half of all new vehicles sold in the United States by 2030 be EVs. Of the three, GM had the largest percentage of its sales derived from fully electric vehicles\u20141.5 percent. Ford sat at 1.3 percent, and Stellantis didn\u2019t even have an electric vehicle for sale in the American market. Meanwhile, Tesla was the nation\u2019s largest EV auto seller at the time, and 100 percent of its vehicles were fully electric. Yet Musk and his company were left off the Biden team\u2019s guest list.<\/strong><\/p>\n

What GM, Ford, and Stellantis did have, of course, was the support of the United Auto Workers Union. In fact, the three also just happened to be the largest UAW employers. Tesla, by contrast, had long fought the unionization of its factories and had been embroiled in a rather ugly dispute with the UAW. In response to the snub, Musk vented a bit,\u00a0tweeting<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\n

Biden held this EV summit. Didn\u2019t invite Tesla.<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

Invited GM, Ford, Chrysler, and UAW. EV summit at the White House, didn\u2019t mention Tesla once and praised GM and Ford for leading the EV revolution. <\/em><\/p>\n

Doesn\u2019t it sound a little bias? It\u2019s not the friendliest of administrations.<\/strong> <\/em><\/p>\n

Seems to be controlled by the unions.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Just under a year later, Musk reached the second inflection point, which also turned out to be his breaking point.<\/strong> <\/u><\/p>\n

In May 2022, the S&P 500 ESG Index conducted its annual rebalancing. And when it did, it removed Tesla.<\/strong><\/p>\n

ESG stands for \u201cenvironmental, social, and governance\u201d investing, a strategy that purports to push corporations to address issues beyond traditional profits and losses, focusing on the broader societal impacts of their operations. I wrote a whole book about ESG (The Dictatorship of Woke Capital<\/em><\/a>) in which I made the case that its flaws are numerous and disqualifying. One of the most significant of these is that ESG has no set definition. It means whatever its practitioners decide it means in the moment, based on little more than preference and convenience. And this is precisely where the S&P\u2019s index ran into problems with Tesla.<\/p>\n

By any objective measure, Tesla should have been a mainstay of any investment strategy focused on environmental benefits.<\/strong> It was and is a pioneer in carbon reduction strategies in the personal transportation market. What could be more environmentally friendly than that? The S&P, however, objected to Tesla\u2019s procedural strategies, or lack thereof. It argued that Tesla didn\u2019t have a published \u201clow-carbon strategy,\u201d or verifiable \u201ccodes of conduct.\u201d It noted that the automaker had been accused of racial discrimination and didn\u2019t do a great job of handling a National Highway Transportation Safety Administration (NHTSA) investigation. In short, the ESG index tossed the innovator in \u201cE\u201d technology off its list of acceptable companies because it valued the process of the ESG strategy more than it did the outcomes.<\/p>\n

Needless to say, this incensed Musk. <\/strong>On May 18, he (once again)\u00a0tweeted<\/a>\u00a0his frustration:<\/p>\n

\n

Exxon is rated top ten best in world for environment, social & governance (ESG) by S&P 500, while Tesla didn\u2019t make the list! ESG is a scam. It has been weaponized by phony social justice warriors.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Not coincidentally, two and a half hours later, Musk returned to Twitter to make an announcement about his partisan political future:<\/p>\n

\n

In the past I voted Democrat, because they were (mostly) the kindness party. But they have become the party of division & hate, so I can no longer support them and will vote Republican. Now, watch their dirty tricks campaign against me unfold . . .<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

It is worth noting here that Musk didn\u2019t just switch parties. He\u00a0radicalized<\/em>. His change in partisan affiliation\u00a0and<\/em>\u00a0political involvement was night and day.<\/p>\n

He went from a quiet, nominally aligned center-leftist to a full-blown, aggressive libertarian-conservative.<\/strong> Instead of giving $1,000 here and $1,000 there to Democratic candidates, he started throwing money into politics as if he\u2019d never miss it (in part because he never would). He backed Donald Trump with millions of dollars and then joined his administration (for free) as the leader and organizer of DOGE. The combination of the union-driven and the ESG-driven snubs sent him over the edge. Not only would he no longer support Democrats, but he would support their opponents loudly and generously.<\/p>\n

Although it would be easy (and not entirely wrong) to say that Elon Musk\u2019s political evolution was a self-inflicted wound by the Democrats, who enthusiastically chased him out of their party, it\u2019s more accurate to say that the break between the two was a structural inevitability.<\/strong> That inevitability was inarguably exacerbated and hastened by Democratic overconfidence and miscalculation, but that\u2019s the difference between Musk simply leaving the party and becoming radicalized for the other side. Musk\u2019s shift away from Democratic politics was likely always going to happen and is emblematic of the long-standing tension between so-called \u201cprogressives\u201d and actual progress. The ideology that once sought explicitly to \u201cbetter\u201d the nation and its people has become little more than a machine for creating rules, often at the expense of that improvement. Musk\u2019s fervent embrace of the Democrats\u2019 opponents was driven by personalities\u2014theirs, his, and probably Trump\u2019s.<\/p>\n

Think about it this way…<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/strong>The Progressive coalition traditionally has very much resembled the S&P ESG index noted above. It has always been carefully managed, regulated, labor-friendly, bureaucratic, and procedure-driven. It has always been more about process than outcome. Musk, for his part, is the opposite. He is disruptive, as capitalist entrepreneurs tend to be. He favors that which moves fast, eschews established rubrics, and achieves results. He is outcome-driven and cares very little (sometimes, maybe,\u00a0too<\/em>\u00a0little) about process. The idea that he and today\u2019s Democrats could have remained strongly aligned is, in retrospect, incongruous.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s not to say that he and the GOP are perfectly aligned, but certainly his ethos fits better there, at least for the moment.<\/strong><\/p>\n

The bottom line here is that while process values have their place, they can be self-defeating, particularly when they are allowed to serve as a substitute for experience and reality.<\/p>\n

The Democrats don\u2019t hate Elon Musk because he\u2019s a trillionaire. They hate him because he became a trillionaire by breaking all their dearly held and largely outmoded rules.<\/strong><\/p>\n

There\u2019s a profound lesson in that, if anyone is willing to learn it.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Tyler Durden<\/a><\/span>
\nFri, 06\/19\/2026 – 20:00<\/span><\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Elon Musk Vs The Democrats: Outcomes Vs Process Authored by Stephen Soukup via American Greatness, Years ago, when my oldest son was a Boy Scout, he was asked to write a report\/make a presentation on a modern American \u201chero.\u201d He chose Elon Musk, and I, of course, rolled my eyes so hard they nearly popped… Continue reading Elon Musk Vs The Democrats: Outcomes Vs Process<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":621850,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"rop_custom_images_group":[],"rop_custom_messages_group":[],"rop_publish_now":"initial","rop_publish_now_accounts":[],"rop_publish_now_history":[],"rop_publish_now_status":"pending","footnotes":""},"categories":[20,23],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-621849","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-economic-empowerment","category-national-security","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/buglecall.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/621849","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/buglecall.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/buglecall.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buglecall.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buglecall.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=621849"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/buglecall.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/621849\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buglecall.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/621850"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/buglecall.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=621849"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buglecall.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=621849"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buglecall.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=621849"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}