Maybe Elon Musk Will Cost Donald Trump the Election

Does anyone remember Heidi Montag and Spencer Pratt? They’re a married couple best known for their role in the reality series The Hills, which was sort of the Real Housewives of its day. I’ve never seen the show and, in fact, used to confuse it for Gossip Girl (and Montag for Blake Lively, I’m so sorry!), but there was a period back then when Pratt and Montag dominated the discourse on this very site. It was this glorious time in American pop culture when these two horrible, entitled, rich people were appropriately vilified.

If Kamala Harris wins, I hope we can all go back to spending way too much of our time talking about how awful people are awful instead of how awful people are running our country. I don’t want to write about Elon Musk again, and yet here I am writing about him, but only because there may be a glimmer of hope in his awfulness.

To wit: We talk about the importance of get-out-the-vote operations. It is crucial. In fact, the Post has a poll out this morning showing Donald Trump with a 2-point lead among registered voters in Michigan, but Harris with a 1-point lead among likely voters. The difference? Likely voters were more likely to have voted in 2020 and 2022. For Trump to close that gap, he needs to rally low-propensity voters to get to the polls.

Meanwhile, he’s up against Harris, who has thousands of happy, committed, passionate people knocking on doors and working the phone banks. Those likely voters are going to show up for her.

Donald Trump, on the other hand, has outsourced his get-out-the-vote operation to Elon Musk and his America Pac. Wired has a story out today about how that operation is being run, and it’s appalling.

Many of us have already heard that a lot of those door knockers are claiming to canvass when they aren’t — apparently 25 percent of door knocks aren’t real. And here’s why: Elon Musk is running his get-out-the-vote operation like he runs X, with zero regard for his employees. According to the Wired piece, Musk’s SuperPac flew all these workers to Michigan, only to tell them after they arrived that they’d be working for Trump.

So, first off: You’ve got people who aren’t committed to the cause. They’re just random hires, literally placed on a quota with an insane number of doors to knock on each day, following strict guidelines: Knock within 15 seconds of arrival, wait 30 seconds for a response, and log everything via tracking apps.

These canvassers are also being driven around in the back of U-Haul vans and put up in motels. They’re being told that if they don’t hit their quotas, not only will the SuperPac not cover their lodging but it also won’t pay to fly them back home.

Morale among these campaign workers is low, weighed down by difficult conditions, unmet expectations, and a feeling of deception. This, coupled with the pressure to meet steep quotas under threat of losing accommodations, has led to widespread distrust, disillusionment, and exploitation.

And that is Donald Trump’s get-out-the-vote operation. So, I guess we’ll find out next week what works better: spirited, happy campaign workers fighting for a cause they believe in, or scared canvassers fighting to make sure they can get back home.

Finally, speaking of door knockers, this video is fantastic. My jaw dropped.

Post by @yasharali

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Source: Wired