Elon's party in the USA

0:02Elon Musk wants to create a new political party. He's fed up with excessive government spending and waste and graft. And he's mad about the Epstein files. And he did a poll and people were actually really into the idea. But then he stopped mentioning it. And he's just been tweeting about Grok and Europe's fertility rate. And did you hear he unfollowed Pam Bondi? President Trump thinks we're too simple, lol. We have a tremendous success with the Republican Party. The Democrats have lost their way, but it's always been a two-party system. And I think starting a third party just adds to confusion.

0:38It really seems to have been developed for two parties. Third parties have never worked. So he can have fun with it, but I think it's ridiculous. But is Elon serious? That's coming up on Today Explained.

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2:01Now to the grill of Opel on Saturday, 24 January, with your partner. More on opel.de.

2:31And as a reporter and a columnist, it makes for good grist for columns. All right. So you heard that Elon wants to start a new political party. What's he thinking? You know, it's a good question. Everybody always wonders what Elon's thinking when he when he does a series of bizarre posts, tweets. But I think he's doing this because what he really wants is political power and attention. And I think he thought he'd essentially bought that by backing Donald Trump the tune of like 300 million dollars in the last election. Let me tell you, we have a new star. A star is born, Elon. But as it turned out, he didn't.

3:06He's worn the hat. Trump was right about everything. But I'm very disappointed. And Trump turned on him, ousted him, took away his EV tax credits, didn't cut the deficit, trashed him on social media. I don't know what it is. It's sort of Trump derangement syndrome, I guess they call it. And now I think Elon is humiliated and looking for a way to respond and hit back. He is not saying those things, though. He's saying there are, like, real reasons that I want to do this. What is he claiming he wants here? Well, you know, yes, I'm reading between the lines a little bit. But I think what he's claiming he wants is he wants to cut the deficit.

3:42And I think that he'd like to restore those EV tax credits. You know, he's tweeted to the effect that this is terrible for, you know, for science, for America's place. And it's a technological race with China. If this insane spending bill passes, the America Party will be formed the next day. Our country needs an alternative to the Democrat-Republican Uniparty so that the people actually have a voice. I mean, there are certainly valid reasons why Elon would want to start a political third party, you know, presuming he could and could field competitive candidates. But there are a lot of doubts about any of those things.

4:20But right now, you know, he wanted what he wanted and he didn't get a lot of it from Donald Trump. And so now he's trying a different route or says he's trying a different route. Do we know anything about what the party would stand for? Like what his platform would be? I mean, to the extent that it even exists, which it doesn't yet, it'll stand for whatever Elon wants it to. I think that, you know, we could presume that it would be pro-business, that it would be pro-science, that it would probably be pro-clean energy, pro-space travel. I mean, certainly Elon has a list of policy interests that would overlap with a serious political third party.

4:58And if you were to kind of subtract Elon Musk himself from the equation, you could even kind of put together a pretty interesting party based on a lot of those principles. But the thing with Elon is anybody who follows his social media feed for more than five minutes will notice is that he's constantly hemming and hawing and he's going back and forth and he's prone to conspiracy theories and temporary periodic obsessions. I don't remember Elon Musk being particularly concerned about the deficit, you know, before this latest episode. But now he claims that he is. I think a book can be big or it can be beautiful.

5:35But I don't know if it can be both. I don't remember him being super concerned about the Jeffrey Epstein files, but, you know, that's a recent obsession of his, too. How can people be expected to have faith in Trump if he won't release the Epstein files? So I think what the America Party winds up standing for will very much be up in the air and, you know, might not even be the kind of thing that you could, like, put down on paper and expect to last for any degree of time. because I think Elon is so prone to getting excited about different things and changing his mind. I was on his Twitter feed this morning, and he was tweeting up a storm last night, but it was all about Grok having problems.

6:19Oh, yeah, tell me about that. I, out of journalistic restraint, I'm not even going to try to characterize what is going on here. But OK, my question for you is this. How will we know he's serious about this? Like, what will it take for you to be like, oh, this is not just a five-minute obsession. He means it. Well, what it's going to take to actually start a political party, you have to do a bunch of different things. You can't just announce it on Twitter and you can't just, you know, donate a bunch of money to a political action committee, which, by the way, he already has. And he's perfectly capable of influencing American politics in either party or both parties just based on what he already has now.

6:55But if he wants to start an actual third party, you have to file a lot of paperwork. You have to get lots and lots of signatures. You have to have some kind of a platform, some kind of a rationale to make it official. It's very work intensive. It takes a lot of people to get it done, and it takes a lot of time and effort. Now, certainly, he's got the money to back this kind of effort if he wants to. But as we all know, Elon Musk isn't always the most reliable when it comes to following through on his claims or his big ideas. I mean, I kind of categorize this mentally in the realm of like, you know, Elon wanting to go to Mars or Elon saying that, you know, there's going to be fully automated Teslas driving leets of cars all over the U.S.

7:34It's something he'd like to happen. It's something I think he's genuinely interested in, thinks it would be a neat idea. But I don't think that he necessarily is going to kind of follow through on it or has any idea what it is he's actually biting off. How's the idea being received? Like, who's taking him seriously? Nobody that I've come across yet. Huh? Most people are kind of scoffing at the idea, thinking it's just a periodic whim because Elon has a long track record of saying things and then not following through. I think also he's not the first rich, politically interested newcomer to hit upon the idea of starting out some kind of a centrist pro-America third party.

8:12I mean, it's almost a cliche how many wealthy people new to politics kind of come up with this idea, think it's original, misread poll numbers, imagine in themselves that there's a huge constituency out there just waiting to line up behind them and their particular idiosyncratic views. And then when they go and run or test it out, it turns out that there isn't. So I think if Elon were to move forward with the idea, it wouldn't be nearly as easy as he's claiming it would be in a social media post. Elon Musk has some other day jobs, right? He's responsible for SpaceX, for Tesla. Ever since he got involved with government, his businesses, his actual businesses, have been taking some hits, right?

8:53People are not thrilled about Tesla, buying fewer Teslas. Tesla's stock is whipsawing all over the place. How are his investors, the people to whom, you know, in a business environment he really owes the most, how are they reacting to this idea? Not well. You know, I don't think it was any accident that when Trump and Musk, before their fallout, announced that Musk was leaving government and going back to the private sector, Tesla stock rallied quite a bit. And there was great sighs of relief from Tesla bulls that Elon was going to come back. He was going to focus on the work. And now we've learned that, no, as a matter of fact, he probably isn't.

9:33He's going to launch off on some kind of a quixotic political crusade. And you could kind of see the disappointment and frustration and angst playing out among Tesla investors. Tesla stocks are down 8 % this morning after Elon Musk announced a new political party. This is not what investors want. They don't want Elon Musk focusing on political activities or spending most of his time talking about politics and fighting with the president. One of them prominently, who's a big Elon bull, had said on social media, oh, you know, we can make this work. Let's give Elon a better pay package that'll concentrate him on his Tesla mission.

10:09It'll help the stock price. And maybe, you know, we can have a rider in his new contract saying no, no political involvement. And Elon sort of tweeted back and said, that's a dumb idea. Shut up. And something to that effect. So Elon does not want to be limited in terms of his political activities, it seems. And that's probably bad news for his companies. He has talked on Twitter about what he wants to do specifically, and he's made it seem like he wants to actually just focus on Senate seats and House seats. Like, he doesn't he's not expressing like a grand ambition. He's like a couple seats here, a couple seats there.

10:46Has he been talking to anybody that could help make this a reality? So if what he wants to do really is just play in the midterm elections, that's actually something he really could do. And he doesn't even need an America Party in order to be able to do it. He has a political action committee that was very active in the last election on behalf of all sorts of House and Senate candidates, probably helped Republicans win or expand their margins in the House and in the Senate. And it's the kind of thing he could do this time around. I think the challenge, though, is what does Elon actually want to accomplish in the midterm?

11:18Does he want to punish Republicans who voted for the big, beautiful bill? If he does, that's going to present sort of a problem because he's either going to have to get centrist or non-Trumpy Republicans to run in these seats. And that's a really tall order. Or he's going to have to back Democrats. And I mean, I wouldn't rule that out either. If what he really is concerned about is to put the brakes on government spending, then maybe the best thing for him is to get Democrats elected, have them win back the House. And then you wind up in a situation where Washington is in gridlock and nothing can pass, including additional budget busting, deficit exploding bills like the one we just saw signed into law.

11:58So what do we make of all this? You said earlier, like, lots of rich guys have tried to start third parties. Is this time different, Josh? I, you know, I'm not really in the business of making predictions. But if you put a gun to my head and made me make one, I'd say that, no, this time probably isn't different. The one wild card is that I think Elon is much more aggressive and willing to spend his own money and lots of his own money in the service of plans and projects that probably aren't going to work out or that other people might view as ridiculous. ridiculous. Like I was a big skeptic of him kind of getting behind Trump and thinking he'd really be able or be willing to write those kind of huge checks because the knock on Elon and Washington over the last eight, 10 years was, well, you know, he talks a big game and he promises he's going to get involved, but when it comes time to stroke a check, he's never willing to do that.

12:53Well, it turned out he was willing to do that. He wrote a bunch of really great big checks. And so if he's willing to back his America party idea with lots and lots and lots of money, who knows? I mean, he could have an effect. It might not be the effect that he intends, but he could certainly disrupt any number of House and Senate races in a way that produces a meaningful impact, not just on the outcome of those races, but in terms of who winds up, which party winds up controlling the House and to a lesser extent the Senate after the 2026 midterms.

13:24Joshua Green of Bloomberg Businessweek. Coming up, polling shows, and I did not know this, that most Americans are actually sick of the two-party system. The argument that getting rid of it is possible.

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17:41It's a party of the day at play. My name is Lee Drepman. I am a senior fellow at the New America Think Tank. I'm a political scientist, and I'm the author of Breaking the Two-Party Doom Loop, the Case for Multiparty Democracy in America. You are not a big fan of the two-party system. You know, I think it's outlived its usefulness. Huh? What's the thesis? Go ahead. Tell me why. But America is a pretty big, diverse country these days, you may have noticed. And to fit everybody into just two parties seems like kind of insanity. And it's clearly not working. Also, it has divided this country into two teams, the red and the blue team, that have learned to absolutely hate each other.

18:31It's created these artificial divisions around this zero-sum, winner-take-all electoral politics that is just really breaking down the foundations of democracy in this country. So I think there was a time when it worked reasonably well for certain reasons, but that time is in the past. Okay, so you will know that Elon Musk agrees with you. He says he wants to start a third party. He ran one of his little polls on Twitter, and the question was, is it time to create a new political party in America that actually represents the 80 % in the middle? I'm looking at that poll now. 80 % of people said yes, 20 % said no.

19:11How does that match up with reality in the U.S.? Well, there are two parts to that question. One is how many people want a third party, and then two is how many people want that party to be somewhere in the middle. Now, the first part, how many people want a third party, that 80 % is a little bit high. There might be some selection bias there. but it is close to polls that I've seen. Generally, it's about 60 to 70 % of Americans say there ought to be more than two parties when polled. So overwhelmingly, Americans say they want more than two parties. Now, is the party that they want a party in the center?

19:54That's less clear. I think people's perception of the political center depends on themselves. I think everybody, most people think that they're more reasonable and they're more moderate. But in reality, when you look at the viewpoints of the American electorate, as I've done repeatedly, you see that the support for a genuine center party is limited, maybe 10 to 15 percent. But there is a lot of interest in parties that are maybe not as traditional. all. Third party candidates do run for office all the time in the United States. They very rarely win. If so many voters want more options, why don't we have more people in elected office from third parties?

20:43Here you're hitting on the core problem, which is that we have a single winner system of elections. So in a single winner election, third parties become spoilers and wasted votes because it's one of the two major parties is going to win every election. So voting for a third party is just basically a protest vote or maybe it could spoil the election. And as a result, most people don't want to do that because they think, well, I want to vote for somebody who at least has a chance of winning. And more importantly, people who have ambition in politics say, well, I'm not going to waste my time with one of these fringe parties.

21:30I want to actually win. So you get minor parties that are mostly cranks and weirdos. And people say, well, I'd like to vote for another party, but not that third party. What's the recent history of third-party candidates, serious third-party candidates at a national level? I have like a vague memory of Ross Perot. Now, just for the record, I don't have any spin doctors. I don't have any speechwriters. Probably shows. I make those charts you see on television even. That shows. But I couldn't give you many details because it was the 90s. How serious have third-party candidates been over time?

22:14Yeah, well, Ross Perot is the most recent third-party candidate to actually get a pretty decent share of the electorate. He got almost 20 % of the electorate, although he didn't win a single state. A lot of people remember Ralph Nader in 2000. Here we go again. Who only got about 3 % of the vote, but it was a very well-placed 3 % because his votes were more than the difference between Bush and Gore in Florida and a few other states. Clearly, George W. Bush took far more votes away from Gore, didn't he? But why not call him a spoiler? Before that, you had George Wallace running in 1968 on the American Independent Party as sort of a preserved segregation platform.

23:01The Supreme Court of our country has handcuffed the police. They have rendered decisions today that are absolutely ludicrous and asinine. And then 1912, you have Teddy Roosevelt running as a bull moose. Third party candidate was the most successful third party candidate. Are the American people fit to govern themselves, to rule themselves, to control them? I believe they are. And of course, he had already been president. So you've had periodically third party challenges at a presidential level, at a House and Senate level. You have a few people who run as independents, but it's people tend to go right for the presidency because that creates a level of visibility if you're trying to build a party.

23:51All right. So in terms of solutions, if one thinks that the two party system is a problem, let's talk about solutions. You you advocate for something called proportional representation. Explain what what what that is and why you think it might be a solution here. Well, proportional representation is the most common system of voting. And basically, at its simplest level, it means that parties get shares of seats in proportion to what percent of the vote they get. So if a party gets 30 percent of the vote, it gets 30 percent of the seats in the legislature. If it gets 10 percent, it gets 10 percent.

24:32Now, there are varieties of proportional representation that we could spend an hour going in the weeds on. Tell me the one you like the best. Like, what would work in the U.S.? So what I think would work in the U.S. is probably the most commonly used version, which is called openless proportional representation with multi-member districts, which is this idea that, you know, rather than having a single district with a single representative, you have a single district with five representatives. The district is larger, and then the parties put forward lists of candidates. You choose the candidate from the party that you like.

25:12All the votes for each party get tallied up, and then the seats get allocated in proportion. So if a party gets 40 % of the votes in that five-member district, its top two candidates go represent the district. If a party gets 20%, it's top candidate. So in theory, you can have five parties representing the same district. So we talk a lot about gerrymandering as a huge problem, and it is. Fair elections, the cornerstone of American democracy. Psych. Welcome to my political pizzeria where my pies are as screwed up as the gerrymandered districts in your congressional home. Gerrymandering sucks. But you move to five member proportional districts, gerrymandering becomes irrelevant.