\n<\/p>\n
This is an edition of The Atlantic Daily, a newsletter that guides you through the biggest stories of the day, helps you discover new ideas, and recommends the best in culture. Sign up for it here.<\/p>\n
If you\u2019re old enough, you\u2019ve seen this movie: An eccentric billionaire, full of bile and nursing grudges against the incumbent Republican president, wants to create a third major political party and shake up the system.<\/p>\n
In 1992, the billionaire was H. Ross Perot, and his vehicle for attacking the incumbent president, George H. W. Bush, was something called the Reform Party. Perot had a few good ideas; he wanted to balance the federal budget, for example, which is never a bad thing. But mostly, he was something of a rich crank who had a vendetta against the Bush family: In one of many strange moments, Perot claimed that his abrupt exit from the race in the summer of 1992 was because Bush had been plotting a smear campaign against his daughter, something for which he never offered proof.<\/p>\n
It wasn\u2019t a very good movie, and it certainly didn\u2019t need a reboot, but we might be getting one anyway. Elon Musk has announced the formation of the \u201cAmerica Party,\u201d a new political organization whose main idea is \u2026 well, the goal isn\u2019t clear. Musk hasn\u2019t said much about it, other than that it would be dedicated to stopping wasteful government spending. But mostly, his announcement seems dedicated to aggravating President Donald Trump, with whom Musk has had a very public falling out. And Trump is plenty aggravated. \u201cI am saddened to watch Elon Musk go completely \u2018off the rails,\u2019 essentially becoming a TRAIN WRECK over the past five weeks,\u201d Trump wrote on his Truth Social site on Sunday, adding that the \u201cone thing Third Parties are good for is the creation of Complete and Total DISRUPTION & CHAOS.\u201d<\/p>\n
Trump\u2019s trademark punctuation aside, the president has a point, at least about the possible disruption of the GOP. Even if Musk is serious\u2014and one never knows with planet Earth\u2019s richest jumping jester\u2014the odds of this new party coming into existence are low: Third parties don\u2019t get much traction in the U.S. political system. The chances that it will become a force in American politics are even lower. But if that\u2019s the case, why is Trump so angry? A few days later, perhaps realizing how panicky his initial reaction sounded, Trump changed his tune. \u201cIt\u2019ll help us,\u201d he said of Musk\u2019s new party.<\/p>\n
And here, Trump is wrong: If Musk creates a new party to appeal to disaffected members of the now-defunct coalition that he, Trump, and some of the MAGA movement all cohabited, such a party\u2014if it has any impact at all\u2014is likely to hurt Republicans more than Democrats. Musk is a deeply unpopular figure in American politics, but what public support he enjoys comes heavily from the GOP itself. For now, he seems to be taking Perot\u2019s approach, rooting the America Party in anger about the bloated and irresponsible One Big Beautiful Bill that Trump and the Republicans squeaked through Congress.<\/p>\n
But who\u2019s the audience for this appeal? It\u2019s not big business or economic conservatives; Musk\u2019s record as a business leader has taken a major hit, and those groups have already thrown in their lot with Trump and the GOP. It\u2019s not the national-security Republicans, who know that Musk is no better than the fringiest and most isolationist Trumpers when it comes to foreign affairs. It\u2019s certainly not the Never Trumpers, who, if Musk even wanted their support in the first place, would never forget his sycophantic embrace of Trump.<\/p>\n
The real worry for Republicans is that Musk will peel off small numbers of people in two groups, both of them important to Trump\u2019s grip on Capitol Hill. One group consists of swing voters who don\u2019t much like Trump but who have stayed with him for various reasons; Musk might be able to get them pumped up about another celebrity movement. They could be swayed by Musk\u2019s supposed anger about budgets the same way some of them bought into arguments about egg prices and inflation, allowing Musk\u2019s candidates to shave away a few points here and there from the GOP.<\/p>\n
But more worrisome to the Republicans is that Musk will corner the crackpot vote.<\/p>\n
When Musk first broke with Trump, he claimed on X that the president was named in files relating to Jeffrey Epstein, the pedophile who committed suicide in prison and with whom Trump had a long friendship. Some of Trump\u2019s supporters, including FBI Director Kash Patel, had earlier teased the possibility of great revelations from \u201cthe Epstein files.\u201d Then they gained power and perhaps realized that some of these files either didn\u2019t exist or didn\u2019t contain anything explosive.<\/p>\n
Musk might sense that he should avoid openly courting this part of the Trump coalition, but it\u2019s too late: The MAGA fringe will likely see a natural ally in Musk anyway, not least because Musk engaged in various forms of conspiracism even before he tried to play the Epstein card against Trump. If a number of people in MAGA world think the \u201cdeep state\u201d is even Deeper and Stater now that it\u2019s ostensibly captured administration officials who were once trusted by Trump supporters, such as Attorney General Pam Bondi, they are going to look for a new vehicle for their beliefs. Musk and his party could fit that bill.<\/p>\n
But the actual damage to any party is likely to be small. Even if Musk could present himself as the face of fiscal conservatism, that\u2019s not enough to sustain a party in the age of reality-TV politics. Musk can form a party, but he can\u2019t run for president as its head, preventing him from taking the Green Party gadfly Jill Stein\u2019s role as the spoiler in American elections. Even Perot at the height of his influence won only 19 percent of the popular vote in the 1992 election; he didn\u2019t gain a single electoral vote, and his Reform Party exists now mostly as memorabilia that people have stashed in attics for some 30 years. (He tried again in 1996. He got 8 percent of the popular vote.)<\/p>\n
In the end, this whole project is likely to go nowhere, and I will admit that this suits me fine as an American who likes the two-party system and distrusts third parties in general\u2014even if I am no longer a member of either major party.\u00a0 When I used to teach political science, I would remind students that large parties are meant to serve a useful purpose of aggregating interests, rather than dividing them. Big parties in a winner-take-all system (where the person who gets the most votes wins the seat outright) force people with differing agendas to get along with one another and accept compromises in order to elect candidates who might not be acceptable to any one of them but who overall represent their general desires. Independent and swing voters can make similar judgments, joining or leaving coalitions in various elections.<\/p>\n
The party system in America has problems: Too many people don\u2019t vote\u2014especially in primaries\u2014and many of those who do vote don\u2019t comprehend even the rudiments of the issues before them. A fair number of voters have also embraced cruelty and ignorance as virtues. But these are social problems, not constitutional or structural issues. If Musk throws billions of dollars into creating a party that siphons off voters who think the name DOGE was a clever acronym and who worry about chemtrails, thus weakening Trump\u2019s power in the short term, so be it. But another party headed by another billionaire who doesn\u2019t understand the Constitution, the U.S. government, or democracy itself is not the path to a healthier nation.<\/p>\n
Related: <\/p>\n
Here are three new stories from The Atlantic:<\/strong><\/p>\n Today\u2019s News<\/strong><\/p>\n Evening Read<\/strong><\/p>\n Illustration by Sophia Deng<\/p>\n The Work of Caring for My Daughter Will Never Be \u201cEfficient\u201d<\/p>\n By Julie Kim<\/p>\n After Izzy was diagnosed, in 2018, I wrote about my grief over not knowing if she would ever talk, walk, or recognize me as her mother. I still grieve those milestones. Yet I also marvel at Izzy\u2019s many accomplishments: how she has mastered navigating the busy menus on her \u201ctalker,\u201d an augmentative communication device provided by the New York City Department of Education; her stamina during physical-therapy sessions, wedged into breaks between classes; how during social studies, her least-favorite subject, she has figured out that pointing at her diaper and then the exit sign will promptly get her out of class.<\/p>\n I am confident that she knows and loves me, even if she might not fully grasp that I\u2019m the one who birthed her. At the same time\u2014and here I think of her orbit of loving teachers, therapists, and other caregivers, particularly those at her school\u2014I would not be surprised if Izzy believes, deep down, that she has many mothers, of which I am but one.<\/p>\n Read the full article.<\/p>\n More From The Atlantic<\/em><\/p>\n Culture Break<\/p>\n Keystone Press \/ Alamy<\/p>\n Watch. My Mom Jayne (streaming on HBO Max) is a documentary about Jayne Mansfield directed by her daughter Mariska Hargitay. It\u2019s also a reminder that the star was more than the next Marilyn Monroe.<\/p>\n Enjoy the show. When Hulk Hogan turned heel, pro wrestling\u2014and America?\u2014was never the same, James Parker writes.<\/p>\n Play our daily crossword.<\/p>\n Stephanie Bai contributed to this newsletter.<\/p>\n Explore all of our newsletters here.<\/em><\/p>\n When you buy a book using a link in this newsletter, we receive a commission. Thank you for supporting <\/em>The Atlantic.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" This is an edition of The Atlantic Daily, a newsletter that guides you through the biggest stories of the day, helps you discover new ideas, and recommends the best in culture. Sign up for it here. If you\u2019re old enough, you\u2019ve seen this movie: An eccentric billionaire, full of bile and nursing grudges against the<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":10435,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[55],"tags":[3399,3400,2651,1913],"class_list":{"0":"post-10434","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-social-issues","8":"tag-angry","9":"tag-billionaire","10":"tag-party","11":"tag-political"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10434","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=10434"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10434\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/10435"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=10434"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=10434"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=10434"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}\n