Elon Musk, the New Hero of Populism

Republicans have settled on their midterm argument: Democrats are all Communists. As an election strategy, this is as lame as it is ludicrous. But there is a small kernel of political reality underlying the new right-wing red-baiting: The emergence of a widespread public backlash against the extreme concentration of wealth in the hands of billionaires.

T his backlash shows up in multiple surveys. According to the Harris Billionaires Survey, 73 percent of Americans believe that wealth inequality is a serious national issue, up from 66 percent in 2022. A UMass Amherst poll found 58 percent of Americans saying that billionaires are a threat to democracy, with 45 percent saying that America is an oligarchy, “a government in which a small group exercises control especially for corrupt and selfish purposes.” Only 28 percent disagreed.

And as I noted last week, citing research from political scientist Andrew Hall, Democratic fundraising has recently begun to lean heavily into denunciations of the undue influence of billionaires:

So if you define anyone who raises concerns about the wealth and political power of billionaires as a Communist, well, in that sense you are defining a majority of Americans as communists.

W hy is the public backlash against billionaires going viral now? This is an interesting question, since both t he concentration of wealth at the top and political spending by billionaires have been increasing for decades. For example, the Koch Brothers have been donating to the Federalist Society, the clique of right-wing legal lobbyists who created the Roberts Supreme Court, since the early 1980s. Fossil fuel interests have been spreading climate disinformation since global warming began showing up in the data. Political spending by billionaires has been immense for more than a decade, although it reached new heights to help Trump win the presidency and to win Republican congressional seats in the 2024 election. Why, then, has it taken so long for the popu…