Elon Musk Using his Wealth to Threaten Politicians

Politics & Elections
1

OK, so Musk is out there threatening to primary anyone he doesn’t like if they don’t give him what he wants. He’s now threatening Democrats as well as Republicans.

And the thing is, he has the resources to do it, and we know it can work.

I’m curious whether there’s a legal argument that can be made that an individual shouldn’t be able to do this. Perhaps deeming it blackmail or bribery?

I’m not expecting anyone here to argue that it’s just fine, so that’s not the debate I’m looking for. I’m wondering how it might be stopped within the current legal and constitutional framework. As far as I know, we’ve never seen a billionaire openly do this before. So I don’t think it’s settled law…?

(And if someone DOES want to argue that what Elmo is doing is just fine, well, knock yourself out)

2

Yes, Trump has shown over time that it is a very potent and successful strategy and, like in the NFL, others definitely copy strategy that has shown it works on a consistent basis.

3

Yes Elon is openly threatening primary challenges and saying he will fund it to any republican lawmakers who don’t fall in line (also saying he will fund moderates in heavily democrat seats). I feel this sort of threatening is not good at all in politics.

Tbh it happened (ofcourse not on such a large scale as Elon is now threatening) on the democrat side too.

Not good on either side of the aisle imo. Undue money influence in politics is never good. Unfortunately AFAIK it is legally allowed in usa.

4

Within the bounds of campaign finance laws, i.e. the current $3300 individual contribution limit to candidate campaigns, a sufficiently wealthy individual can spend as much as they want to independently promote or denigrate a candidate without restriction save that they have to report the amounts to the Federal Election Commission (FEC), and campaign statements are very rarely litigated for false, slanderous, and libelous claims because by the time such cases worked through the court system the campaign would be long over. Most wealthy political influencers have had the discretion to hide behind “superPACs”, which since the Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission Supreme Court decision has provided a legally accepted smokescreen but there is nothing that prevents them from doing so out in the open under the quite legitimate argument of political free expression.

This isn’t a problem with election laws per se, and it certainly doesn’t fit the legal definitions of “blackmail or bribery”; this is a problem with the grotesque wealth inequality to the extent that a massive multibillionaire can open buy candidates he wants and who favor his ideas and businesses. (Musk has allegedly told investors that he believes that SpaceX should be the only space launch provider used by the US Department of Defense and NASA, and now literally has the means to squeeze out all competition via policy and legislative fiat instead of through ‘fair’ competition.) Musk can afford to be so brazen because no Republican political figure is going to speak against him, and even if he were violating FEC regulations Musk regularly thumbs his nose at regulatory agencies (even going so far as to engage in a campaign of vengeful persecution against individual lawyers even after they have left federal service) and gets his way, at most paying a comparatively tiny fine to get away with rulebreaking.

This is, of course, the way that autocrats and their boosters subvert democratic societies in a perfectly ‘legitimate’ way to take over absolute political control. That an odious, deceitful, petty, mercurial, thin-skinned, shitty person like Elon Musk can engage in this and not only get away with it but still be fêted by his legions of fawning voteries absolutely convinced of his self-professed genius (he is not) and boosted by the President-Elect as his “Best Buddy” and given control over an as-yet non-existent executive agency for which he has already been formulating nonsensical and ill-informed policy, and very few people in the media are either willing or sufficiently uneducated to object that this is exactly the way fascist regimes take power is as alarming as anything Trump himself has said or done. This is anti-democratic to the core. But…not illegal, which, in the minds of some people, means that there is nothing to be done about openly hijacking the democratic electoral process by (legal) intimidation and bullying.

At this point, it is well worth reviewing the essential elements of fascist political movements and what can be done to oppose them beyond impotent legal strictures. To that end, I present. you with Timothy Snyder’s Lessons On Tyranny:

Stranger

5

Which is all the more rich, because it was argued that SpaceX was needed (and ought to be given all manner of competitive advantages) to address ULA’s monopoly.

Curious, because previous caselaw was mostly aimed at corporations as “people” and money as speech. Truly unprecedented territory with Musk and a few others possessing this amazing level of wealth.

I and many sane folk I have spoken with are unable to see what we are able to do to address the current dynamic - other than voting. We are dependent on enough sane and responsible folk being elected to counterbalance the Trump tide. Hopefully, enough dems will continue to be elected from enough solidly blue districts to provide SOME counterbalance.

6

There is zero chance that there will be any serious legal implications of this. Starting with Citizens United, then the overturning of the Mcdonnell conviction and most recently Snyder, the Supreme Court has effectively legalized political corruption.

7

It seems to be that a constitutional amendment that limits campaign financing, and addresses other corruption issues, is the only possible solution.

Of course, such an amendment is virtually impossible in an environment in which Elon is openly buying politicians, and so the very people we’d need to pass this are running scared of him.

8

Far from being illegal, it’s constitutionally protected:

9

One should note that Musk is not the only wealthy person in the world.

Musk gets one vote. He does get to help politicians reach voters. A lot of voters, grouped together, could also help a politician to reach voters.

A wealthy person might be principally motivated to advance the desires of the wealthy, but he might also be motivated by a desire to protect the employers of the country from financially unwise voters.

An average person might be principally motivated to advance the desires of the ordinary, but he might also be motivated by a desire to see to the benefit of all.

For any wealthy person who is of the negative type, there are also those of the good type; and likewise for the ordinary.

All of these forces are in conflict and each has its own right to advance its cause. The balance of power shouldn’t be split evenly by voter, it should be split evenly such as to create the best overall outcome for everyone.

I wouldn’t say that the current split is the best, but it is better than restricting each person to equal footing. If we did that, we’d vote ourselves under the floor. Nearly everyone is fiscally imprudent.

10

Not trying to hijack, but as someone who used to be somewhat of a constitutional scholar, it amazes me that these days “constitutionally protected” really doesn’t mean anything other than what this Court chooses to decide today.

11

Silly me. I thought that was how the right to vote in a democracy is allocated.

12

The problem with that is that free expression, including of political views, is explicitly protected. Elon Musk can use any amount of his own money and his own social media platform to express any opinion and advocate for any candidate or political cause short of literal “hate speech” which explicitly advocates for or directs criminal acts, and it is protected by that fundamental principle. And I don’t think we want to go down the road of carving out particular exceptions broad enough to cover anything that could be considered political advocacy because of the manifest impact that would have upon all other manner of free expression. “How do we stop someone like Elon Musk from using his wealth to promote a favored candidate?” is the wrong question; the better question is, “How do we prevent individuals from having a grossly outsized impact upon public and political opinions by dint of their massive wealth?”, and implicitly underneath that is, “How do we keep people from attaining such massive ‘wealth’ through market speculation and manipulation?”

Elon Musk isn’t just a “wealthy person”; he is the single most wealthy person in the world by a wide margin.. He has ‘acquired’ most of that wealth through grossly overvalued market speculation, and also used the influence of buying a barely regulated social media platform to espouse hateful and anti-democratic sentiments and to promulgate mistruths, conspiranoia, and outright lies. His actual “one vote” is meaningless in the scope of things, but his ability to credibly threaten legislators of the dominant party with being ‘primaried’ if they don’t support his ill-informed views and follow his dictums is as anti-democratic as it is perfectly legal. Musk has gone well past just promoting ideas or trying to persuade the public of his personal views; he is literally bypassing democratic processes to directly bully legislators, and regardless of how much you might think that elections are a marketplace of ideas where the best policy rises to the top, the reality is that the victor is generally the candidate with the biggest war chest and the most PAC money on their side. (And no, I don’t want to hear about how that is disproven by the massive disparity in the recent presidential election where Harris outspent Trump by a wide margin, because Trump basically didn’t even campaign and still managed to clear a solid margin in the popular vote, so that is obviously a massive anomaly.)

Elon Musk, a man who has never held public office, never really been a political figure or pundit of any kind prior to 2020, who is not any kind of expert or even essentially knowledgable about economics, foreign affairs, domestic policy, or anything else that would make him a credible participant in high level politics, now essentially has the ear of the President-Elect, plenary power to make decisions about how to make government “more efficient” (by which he apparently means cutting US$2T out of the approximately US$1.7T of discretionary spending in the US budget, so figure the math on that one), and now a stranglehold over the political party that has control over both houses of the federal legislature and a large plurality of statehouse legislatures and governorships. He should go for a trifecta and buy himself a Supreme Court justice or three, since they seem to be so cheap to rent. I think Kavanaugh and maybe Gorsuch are most his speed but maybe he can pick up Alito or Barrett for a premium, or just get a clear majority by clearing Roberts (who used to at least pretend to care about the reputation of the Supreme Court but now seems to be just fine diving head first in autocracy).

And unlike the billionaires and cabals of wealthy industrial interests hiding behind 527 orgs, Musk is doing it right out in the open with no sense of shame or notional restraint of ethics. He holds the power that no collection of individual citizens could ever exercise over sitting legislatures, and he is doing it to enact ‘policies’ and disrupt governance even before his political benefactor has any actual control. All of this, of course, is to establish control prior to January 20 so that the Heritage foundation fucktards and political operators can get in on the ground floor and implement as much of the Project 2025 directives as quickly as possible before a mercurial Trump can turn it all into churn or realize how little power he actually wields. That this is not stunningly obvious leads me to the observation that not enough people have read about events in Germany in the 1930-1933 timeframe and how an unpopular, obstructionist political party with a buffoonish but somehow charismatic leader backed by a group of leading industrialists managed to take complete control over the government and literally eliminate all political opposition.

Stranger

13

But as asked in a previous thread, can any amount of money guarantee the outcome of an election? Or even x% of the polls for so many megabucks per percentage point?

14

Facts not in evidence. I’m not denying there are any, but I see no reason to believe more than a scant few put anything ahead of their own wealth, at least until they get old and decide a bunch of libraries with their name on them will buy them enduring post mortem love.

Of course I’m aware of this, but saying “Do this or I’ll fund a primary challenge” seems one more step beyond simply funding a message. I do recognize the law might not say so, and that question was inherent in the OP. But it is certainly my opinion that for practical matters this is an escalation of “unlimited speech,” especially where it carries an overt threat.

15

You could answer that question yourself by doing a little research but here, for instance, is a study on differential campaign finance impacts from 2000 to 2018. It should be noted, though, that while finance has some obvious (though not always consistent) impact upon general election results, it has a huge impact upon primary elections because name recognition (both positive and negative) is the key driver of primary results, and donors will generally throw their money behind the candidate that seems most likely to make it to the general election rather than the one that they are nominally most aligned with on policy issues, and a lot of that is determined by their initial war chest and donor base.

Primaries, for the most part, are not even traditional ‘public’ elections, and even when registered party voters could vote they were largely determined by party machinations in smoky back rooms. Now that more states have open or at least competitive primaries, having an influential patron who is willing to back you with a blank check against all other comers is a massive advantage even when challenging the incumbent, and the world’s richest man waving around six figure support (and more to stay in the game) from his personally-funded 527 group (or just outright ‘buying’ voters in an illegal lottery scheme) is a massive incentive to kowtow to the paymaster.

Stranger

16

It has meant that every day of the country’s existence. We just forget about the earlier battles.

Musk’s threats are potent today, but will they still be in the future? My over/under on when Trump and Musk have their mean girls-style breakup is January 20. The likelihood of Musk’s being a force in the 2026 election is near zero.

Dictators don’t like powerful rivals. Musk should be very careful not to go to Mexico City.

17

We live in a republic, and specifically because the framers wanted to avoid the tyranny of the masses and rule by the uninformed.

We do NOT live in a democracy and the people who created the country were actively attempting to avoid it, because it would be disastrous. The drive for it is just what gives us problems like Trump and Musk.

18

I really have to quibble with this. You see this a lot as justification for when some right group rams through an undemocratic law. We live in a democratic republic.

Argh. I don’t know how I managed to make that a reply to Stranger… Meant for @Sage_Rat

19

That is what it has meant since Marbury v Madison, 1803

20

For that matter voting isn’t even a right– it’s a suffrage granted by class. Now it is a right for all people within a class to exercise that franchise equally, but no one ever even pretended that voting would be universal.