One of the more shocking developments of the recent midterm elections was the transformation of Texas from a red state to a blue state, with Democrats being elected as governor, lieutenant governor, and to the Senate. However, some of the statements made by James Talarico, soon to be Texas’s first Democratic senator in over a generation, have raised eyebrows as well as hopes.
Talarico told NBC News’s Ryan Chandler that he wants to work with Elon Musk to expand innovation. The offer was remarkable, considering that the SpaceX and Tesla CEO had spent a considerable amount of money trying to defeat him.
The senator-elect noted that he has always been a fan of Tesla, manufacturer of electric cars, and SpaceX, the most successful commercial launch company in history. Musk has won a lot of supporters for his technological achievements, which also include Neuralink technology that has allowed disabled people to interact with computers to access the outside world. The technology promises to treat blindness and paralysis in ways hitherto not thought possible.
During his victory speech, Talarico invoked the spirit of Apollo. “We’re the state that put a man on the moon.” It should be noted that Texas has a role in the current effort to return astronauts to the moon, the Artemis program.
Eric Berger, at Ars Technica, notes that the recent midterm elections offers Musk a problem and the Democrats a choice.
“For several years, Musk has been one of the Democratic Party’s loudest antagonists, after Trump. But he is also doing, at enormous scale, some things Democrats have spent a decade saying America needs: investing in domestic manufacturing and chip fabs and creating thousands of industrial jobs, many of them in the red and purple districts Dems just won.”
What are the newly victorious Democrats to do?
“Whether Democrats treat him as someone to be investigated or someone to be bargained with may be the most important open question for him in the next two years.”
Plenty of people on the Left want to drop the hammer on Musk. Former Clinton Labor Secretary Robert Reich wants to nationalize SpaceX and the Starlink system. Bulwark podcaster Kara Swisher suggested that Democrats would try to put Musk in jail. NYU professor Scott Galloway went further, suggesting that Musk is a “traitor to the West” and should be executed like the Rosenbergs.
Against this backdrop, Talarico seems to be a strange voice of reason. He was, after all, the man who claimed that God is “nonbinary” and that there are six sexes. During the recent campaign, he pulled back from those assertions.
Considering the degree of Musk derangement syndrome that infests the modern Democratic Party, one wonders how Talarico’s fellow Democrats will react to his conciliatory stance toward the richest man on the planet. Will they accept his guidance as the junior senator from Texas? Or will they ignore him?
Many Democrats may believe that their sole mandate is to go after President Donald Trump and his supporters like Musk. If Talarico is serious, and there is no reason to believe he is not, he believes that his mandate is to enact what he thinks is sound and good policy for the benefit of the public.
Talarico is not a born-again MAGA. He remains a progressive who favors, among other things, universal healthcare. But he seems, based on his recent statements, to not be an ideologue. He is like Sen. John Fetterman (D-PA), though more professionally dressed.
But it appears that he is no rabid socialist in the mode of Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY). He is, if he is serious about becoming Musk’s ally, a capitalist. Capitalism has brought more prosperity and happiness to more people than any economic system devised.
Musk, for his part, would do well to respond to Talarico and take his outstretched hand. He could use some allies across the aisle, all things considered.
Musk should invite Talarico, along with other newly elected Democrats, to Starbase for the next test of the Starship super rocket. The Democrats would gain a greater appreciation of what Musk is trying to do to open up the high frontier of space.
Space and innovation in general should not be a partisan issue nor should people trying to advance such be named enemies of the people. If Talarico is serious, he recognized that, much to his credit.
Mark Whittington, who writes frequently about space policy, has published a political study of space exploration entitled Why is It So Hard to Go Back to the Moon? as well as The Moon, Mars and Beyond, and, most recently, Why is America Going Back to the Moon? He blogs at Curmudgeons Corner. He is published in the Wall Street Journal, Forbes, The Hill, USA Today, the LA Times, and the Washington Post, among other venues.