The Democrats trying to resist Elon Musk’s rampage across the federal government face a choice: How should they best alert the American people to the dangers he poses?
Do they lean into a defense of the system — of checks and balances, democratic norms, and institutions — and defend the virtues of foreign aid, federal spending, and the bureaucracy?
Or do they make a kitchen-table case about the threat Musk and his deputies pose to Americans’ daily lives, emphasizing his encroachment into the Social Security Administration, Medicare, and Medicaid?
The approaches aren’t mutually exclusive. Still, attention is everything during President Donald Trump’s second term, and Democrats haven’t been able to get much of it. Any time they dedicate to one message likely comes at the expense of others.
A focus on saving democracy and protecting institutions might be more conducive to those who already believe in the system — an audience that overlaps significantly with their college-educated, liberal base.
But a personal appeal — making the case that taxpayers’ personal information, money, and benefits are at risk — could attract less tuned-in, less educated, or less partisan Americans.
It’s a fork in the road for Democrats, and they need to make a choice soon. For the last month, the Democrats’ resistance has appeared sporadic, slow, and splintered, enraging the party base.
That listlessness is why focusing on one line of attack could be fruitful. Trump remains popular, and many Americans don’t fully understand what Musk is up to, or see the upheaval as part of what they voted for. But as the Musk takeover of the government continues, and an actual constitutional crisis looms, Democrats are squandering time to rally those enraged Americans.
Democrats have largely tried to defend norms
During the first weeks of their resistance efforts, Democrats have called out abuses of power and overreach by the executive branch, and they’re talking about the threat to democratic norms that Trump and Musk pose. It’s the kind of messaging that would rile up their base, including college-educated and politically engaged Americans.
But that’s put them in an awkward spot: having to explain legal technicalities, unpopular federal spending, and the dreaded establishment blob of civil servants and federal workers who keep the country running.
For example, when the Office of Management and Budget released a memo ordering an illegal pause on federal grants and loans in January, House Democrats first decried the illegality of the order. They talked at press conferences and in the media about the specifics of the Impoundment Act of 1974, which limits the authority of the president to withhold or disburse money authorized by Congress to be spent. Congressional leaders talked about their “extreme alarm about the Administration’s efforts to undermine Congress’s power of the purse,” while Senate Democrats declared a “constitutional crisis.”
When Musk targeted the US Agency for International Development, and his “Department” of Government Efficiency began to dismantle it, Democrats raised technical questions: Did Musk and DOGE even have the legal authority to lay off the agency’s staff and end aid programs? And who was carrying out these orders?
They rallied at the agency’s headquarters, spoke at protests, and called the dismantling of the agency a threat to the constitutional order. Some, like Sen. Andy Kim of New Jersey and Rep. Eugene Vindman of Virginia, went further, defending the value of USAID’s humanitarian work, speaking of its cultural soft power and of foreign aid as a guarantor of American national security and global dominance.
Yet it’s not clear at all if these arguments have been effective in rallying public opinion against Trump and Musk, let alone actually stopping their actions.
USAID has been essentially dismantled, despite existing court challenges, and Musk and DOGE have focused their efforts on another independent agency, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. The OMB memo was rescinded, but not because of any Democratic congressional rallying or protests.
Through it all, public perception of Trump and Musk didn’t really change. The most recent high-quality national poll of Americans, released this past weekend by CBS News and YouGov, shows a majority of Americans approve of how Trump is governing. More than half of Americans think the administration is putting the right amount of focus on cutting government spending and cutting foreign aid programs, or want to see more done on both issues. That includes most independents, moderates, Republicans, and conservatives — it’s only liberals, Democrats, and college-educated Americans who think there’s too much of a focus on cutting government spending or cutting aid programs.
So, at least for now, the Democratic message against Trump doesn’t seem to be breaking through beyond the core base of voters who would be predisposed not to like Trump’s actions.
Some Democrats think another approach could reach more Americans
If Democrats’ current messaging strategy isn’t working, perhaps one more focused on Musk and the threat his work poses to the lives of everyday Americans might be better. Some Democrats have already begun this pivot — emphasizing Musk’s access to everyday Americans’ personal data and potential meddling with entitlements like Medicare and Social Security in order to rip them off.
It’s the message that some progressives in particular have been using, including when they rallied outside the Treasury Department last week, after news broke that the DOGE team was seeking control of the government’s system for issuing payments.
That payment system, which Musk was seeking access to, contains sensitive and private data for millions of Americans because it deals out Social Security payments and veterans benefits, handles tax refunds, and keeps trillions of dollars of other spending flowing.
“An unelected billionaire and his team have been given full and unfettered access to our taxpayer money and our government,” Rep. Maxwell Alejandro Frost shouted at a February 4 protest. “The fact an unelected billionaire has access to all your private information is a problem … [access to] Social Security Numbers, the federal payment system, which means he’s calling the shots over our taxpayer money.”
And it’s how Sen. Elizabeth Warren has been talking about DOGE’s infiltration of the CFPB over the weekend: “For every American who doesn’t want some weird Elon Musk suck-up searching through your personal private data, this is your fight,” she said at a protest at the CFPB building on Monday. “Elon Musk is trying to shut down the CFPB so Wall Street can cheat and scam you as much as they want.”
Centering Musk, taxpayer money, and personal data like this might prove to be more fruitful: The CBS/YouGov shows that, while Americans seem to approve of Trump’s overall governance, they’re much more wary about Musk’s role. Americans are nearly evenly split when asked how much influence they think Musk and DOGE should have over government spending and operations: Some 23 percent and 28 percent think they should have “a lot” or “some” power. Another 18 percent think they shouldn’t have much, while a plurality, 31 percent, think it should be “none.”
It’s unsurprising that Democrats are much more likely to want less power for DOGE and Musk, but even Republicans are lukewarm on his role: Only 30 percent want them to have “a lot,” and many more think it should be less powerful. Independents and moderates are also split, but a majority of both groups think they should have “not much” or “none.
This suspicion of Musk matches some of the research conducted by the progressive polling firm Data for Progress. Telling voters that DOGE and Musk could “steal” from them by defunding entitlements to fund tax cuts for billionaires and corporations is very persuasive, particularly with independent or third-party voters, the group found.
Likely voters are already suspicious of Musk and his likelihood to use DOGE for self-enrichment, Data for Progress found — centering him as a threat to Americans’ daily lives might simply be more effective.
Democrats are still staring down an identity crisis
If this dichotomy sounds at all familiar — pro-establishment versus populist — it’s because it fits in the pattern of post-November 2024 arguments about the Democratic Party’s identity and message to voters.
A focus on Trump’s threats to democracy and anti-establishment tendencies does not appear to have been successful, particularly as the election was decided in part by voters who rejected the status quo and its keepers. Populist energy boosted Trump, in part because of the perception that he would be better for people’s pocketbooks and daily lives.
So this struggle is essentially a continuation of this identity crisis. Defending the constitutional order and democratic system is an imperative that they feel an obligation to uphold — if the president and his advisers can break laws, ignore court orders, or misappropriate funds, they’re essentially ceding democracy to dictatorship, especially as Republicans follow Trump’s lead and refuse to rein him in.
But after an election loss and stumbles early in Trump’s term, perhaps Democrats will be more inclined toward a new strategy: an individualistic, populist appeal. That approach would target Americans who might agree with some of what Trump says he’s doing, but are wary about Musk’s huge role.
The choice matters. Democrats had hoped that Trump’s extremism would crater his approval, giving the party a leg-up in the coming midterm elections and a check on his power. It’s early, and that still may happen, but early polling demonstrates that it’s not an instant guarantee.
And so, Democrats need an urgent, effective message to push back on the president — and they need to find it soon.
