IMO... Musk wants retribution at any cost, and he possesses the cash with which to purchase it and controls a platform with which to exact it. Furthermore, he's also quite used to getting what he wants.

Musk is like Trump with the exception he doesn't obsess over money (doesn't have to), and he isn't a needy attention whore in constant search of praise/prizes.

close reading is absolutely fundamental.

So true...thanks for practicing what you preach! :)

Close reading - and careful writing, I would add, are prerequisites for thoughtful and respectful discourse anywhere but especially here.

Trump doesn't share the spotlight with anyone for very long. His ego cannot handle doing so. Remember all of those photo ops in the Oval Office at the start of Trump’s presidency? Musk would pull all the attention on himself while Trump just sat at his desk staring blankly straight ahead (like a broken robot from Westworld). That only happened because both Trump and Musk believed Musk had earned that spot in the President’s office. How he earned it is the question we need answered fully and completely.

But to get those precious tax cuts, some Americans are just gonna have to die.

At least they’ll be dying for their Lord and Savior — though as I’ve said before, when you die for your Savior, that’s a cult. A proper religion is when your Savior dies for you.

So, think about it:

1- Trump’s BBB sucks (if you’re not a millionaire) and the more Americans learn about it the bigger the outrage. Twenty-five points underwater level outrage.

2- Legacy media cannot pay attention to more than one shiny object at a time.

3- Trump and Musk stage this little “spat” and suddenly no one’s paying attention to the horrid BBB.

4- ONCE this passes watch as they go back to mostly ignoring each other because each is so toxic to the other.

Caddy,

How could anyone who is following US politics fairly closely or who at least reads all of Chris's columns NOT see the differences between the parties these days? Don't answer that! Of course, that is not to say that they both aren't responsible for the damaging and ever climbing debt to GDP ratio, even considering that one of them has been a cult of economic failure since at least the Reagan era.

If we can't discuss and understand these issues in nuanced fashion, then chances for an enlightened discussion evolving out of it are about zero, especially here in Weigantia.

Caddy,

How could anyone who is following US politics fairly closely or who at least reads all of Chris's columns NOT see the differences between the parties these days? Don't answer that! Of course, that is not to say that they both aren't responsible for the damaging and ever climbing debt to GDP ratio, even considering that one of them has been a cult of economic failure since at least the Reagan era.

If you can't discuss and understand these issues in nuanced fashion, then chances for an enlightened discussion evolving out of it are about zero, especially here in Weigantia.

close reading is absolutely fundamental. what Liz wrote was that the differences "aren't actually that obvious." that doesn't mean they don't exist, nor that they don't become crystal clear upon sufficient research. it's a comment on the media environment, which i happen to agree with. chrisweigant.com is one of the last places left on earth where the commentary is clear-headed enough to live up to the moniker "reality-based." Barry Ritholtz's site is another. most other places, you just can't presume that what you're reading will be even mostly accurate.

JL

How could anyone NOT see the differences between the parties these days? Of course, that is not to say that they both aren't responsible for the damaging debt to GDP ratio, even considering that one of them has been a cult of economic failure since at least the Reagan era.

If you can't discuss and understand these issues in nuanced fashion, then chances for an enlightened discussion evolving out of it are about zero, especially here in Weigantia.

The tone of my question? Classic projection. Or was it intentional misinterpretation because my constant harping on - strike that - prattling on about the Republican cult of economic failure was so, I dunno, clearly an ode to both parties.

Beginning not to like this place. But, I'll keep on keeping on. Just because.

PHWEEET!

“Unnecessary Roughness, 15 yards, still 3rd down.”

Technically you didn’t, Liz, but I also took the tone of your question to suggest that you didn’t see any difference. And that you asked Chris for (a series if’n you want her any kind of details) to show you the difference.

I'll try, again, to be clearer in future. Hopefully, in future, you will not make false claims about what I said. Deal? :)

Forgive my overstating, perhaps, my take on your comment to Caddy that "...those major differences between the parties and what each wants to accomplish aren't actually that obvious."

'Differences not obvious' isn't the same as 'indistinguishable', I admit! But I felt that that was what you were getting at, especially in contrast to the point I was trying to make about the nature of an 'undecided' or 'flexible' political center that by definition is open to considering voting for one or the other of two visibly different political parties.

maybe this is all just a feint to try to manipulate public perception.

JL

But I disagree with Elizabeth [3] that that means the two parties are indistinguishable because they both potentially attract these centrist voters.

Where on God's green earth did I say that the two parties are indistinguishable?

So Musk is blowing smoke, hoping that his billions of dollars will somehow mean something in the court of political public opinion, as opposed to in the back alleys of congressional and presidential lobbying where his money really speaks.

And on the question of whether the two current parties are 'different' or 'the same', I vote for 'different'. Sure, both represent elite sectors of the national society and speak for parts of the governing and owning class. But the sectors and parts are different enough in messaging - fairness and equal justice (in theory) vs. brutal dominance and prejudice in favor of white males (in theory), for instance - that most voters do actually recognize that a vote for a Republican is not the same as a vote for a Democrat.

Yes, there is an undecided middle with vague leanings, as MtnCaddy notes [2], which Chris estimates as being 30-40% of the electorate. But I disagree with Elizabeth [3] that that means the two parties are indistinguishable because they both potentially attract these centrist voters. I take the existence of a middle, able to swing to some degree in either direction, as the natural distribution in any population of people with relatively complex (or weak) political views, where emotions and reason are in conflict, or economic interests are different from class or social interests. No society has ever been split exactly into two competing parties - there will always be a middle 'up for grabs'. But that speaks more to the two parties (in the US) being different than being the 'same' in some existential sense. If they were the same, so to speak, elections wouldn't matter; G W Bush would be as likely as Obama to reform health care, and Obama would be as likely as G W Bush to invade Iraq with no end game in mind, etc., etc.

Maybe that is because those major differences between the parties and what each wants to accomplish aren't actually that obvious.

...but these days it's pretty glaringly obvious that there are major differences between Republicans and Democrats, and what each party wants to accomplish. Calling them a "uniparty" is simply not a serious statement.

It might make for an interesting (and, perhaps, even non-brief) column if you could lay out these differences, issue by issue, in great detail. It could come in handy for 2027/28.

Musk's problem is going to become very apparent very quickly. He'll have to actually find candidates to run under his new party's banner.

Hasn't this been tried recently, to great failure as willing candidates were as scarce as hen's teeth?