Democrats Frame Trump’s Friends as Foes

As Washington prepares for the second inauguration of Donald Trump, Democrats are locked out of power, stuck reckoning with the fact that despite years of pushback and plotting, their chief political antagonist has only grown stronger and more popular and rendered them a minority party.

Some, though, see glimmers of hope in a newer line of attack — one aimed not at the president-elect himself, but at the wealthy friends flocking to support him.

They have suggested that Elon Musk, the world’s richest man, who is expected to roll out his so-called Department of Government Efficiency from an office in the White House complex, is really calling the shots. They plan to invoke the president-elect’s billionaire allies as they gear up for a fight over Trump’s proposed tax cuts. And they’re anticipating an irresistible opportunity to further highlight those connections when a trio of billionaire tech executives — Musk, Mark Zuckerberg and Jeff Bezos — could well be front and center at Trump’s inauguration on Monday.

“We are approaching this administration, and the 13 billionaires they put in their cabinet, with the opinion that, ‘Are you going to work for the American people?’” said Representative Katherine Clark of Massachusetts, the No. 2 House Democrat. “Are you going to meet us and work to lower costs, or are you going to feather your own nest?”

It’s a strategy that suggests that, despite President Biden’s low approval ratings and waning influence, his farewell warning Wednesday night about an emerging “oligarchy” and the “tech-industrial complex” could have some resonance in a party that desperately needs to recapture the working-class voters it has lost to Trump.

But it’s not without risk, given the popularity of some of those billionaires: While Musk may be seen as a Bond villain by some, he’s still Tony Stark to many others.

“When we look at having him involved,” Michael Whatley, the chairman of the Republican National Committee, told me this morning, “it’s an absolute value add.”

Building a case against Musk

If Democrats lean into a growing hostility to certain billionaires, it will mark something of a shift from their approach during the Obama era. Then, the party plunged itself into second-guessing when, in 2009, President Obama called Wall Street leaders “fat cat bankers.” He later said he wasn’t interested in “vilifying” anybody.

Now, at least some Democrats are eager to vilify certain billionaires — particularly Musk — whom they say wield undue influence over the levers of power at the expense of regular people. At a forum held by Politico last night for candidates running for chairman the Democratic National Committee, one leading candidate said that, as D.N.C. chair, he would not accept donations from Musk.

“There are a lot of donors there who are clearly working against the interest of working-class people that I would not take money from,” Ken Martin, who currently leads Minnesota Democrats, said.

After Musk weighed in against a spending deal late last year, spurring Republicans to rework their bill, Democrats warned that an unelected billionaire was essentially acting like the president. And progressives like Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts have sought to highlight Musk’s and other tech billionaires’ potential conflicts of interest.

“It’s important in this moment to connect how Big Tech billionaires calling the shots in a Trump administration affects the lives of working people,” Warren said in a statement, in which she argued that “tax giveaways” for billionaires would come at the cost of “Congress lowering the cost of child care and housing for families.”

One national Democratic strategist involved in the party’s House campaigns told me Musk was expected to be a major focal point as the party tries to win back power. But not everyone is convinced that’s the right strategy — particularly those who regret that Musk, who has said he voted for Biden in the 2020 election, ever deserted Democrats in the first place.

Not a surefire strategy

Musk poured money into Trump’s re-election bid and parked himself in the key swing state of Pennsylvania, which Trump won. As a result, some Democrats believe that attacking a billionaire like Musk could have its downsides. Attempts by the Harris campaign to attack Trump and Musk as “self-obsessed rich guys” did not seem to work.

“He’s very popular with young men in particular, and I think we’d be wise to think about that,” Representative Chris Deluzio of Pennsylvania, a Democrat who won a tough seat in Western Pennsylvania, told me.

Deluzio succeeded with a populist message that derided corporate “jagoffs,” as he put it, but he suggested Democrats should highlight systemic problems rather than individual personalities.

“I don’t think the problem is any one really rich and powerful guy, in this case, Mr. Musk,” he said. “I think the problem is because you’re a rich and powerful guy or gal, you get to have more power in our politics.”

Democrats now have two years to figure out what to say and how to say it, and whose names to name or not. It’s no surprise that a party still diagnosing why it lost hasn’t reached total agreement on whether tech billionaires who still have many admirers will make for an effective enough foil.

Senator Bernie Sanders, for example, was quick to blame Democrats’ losses on its failure to come up with ideas to address the “oligarchy.” But the contrarian Democrat John Fetterman, of Pennsylvania — who recently said he admired Musk — said the party’s problems were cultural.

“Walk around in Scranton,” he told me last November, and “tell me what an oligarch is.”