I Outspent Elon Musk!

AI's take on Elon's shrug and my grin.

Reports are that Elon Musk poured roughly $450 million of his considerable fortune into Republican political campaigns this year. I was pleased to contribute to a considerably smaller assortment of candidates myself: Vincent Mendes, Shawn Harris, Keisha Lance Bottoms, Jon Ossoff, Scott Colom, and the DNC, DCCC, and DSCC. I may be overlooking one or two.

And my donations were MUCH bigger than Musk's!

Well, proportionally speaking, that is. And as it turns out, I got a whole lot more for my money!

I read that Elon Musk was making jokes about the election results after spending nearly half a billion dollars trying to elect Republicans. He even posted a little shrug emoji, apparently taking his losses in stride.

I reckon it's easier to shrug off a few hundred million dollars when you've got hundreds of billions more where that came from.

I imagine my contributions didn't attract nearly as much attention as Elon's, but: When you compare what each of us gave with what each of us has, my contributions represented a MUCH bigger share of my wealth than his did.

In fact, for an American family with the median net worth, matching Musk's generosity would require a political contribution of only a little over a hundred dollars.

I'm a retired teacher. I've bought exactly two brand-new cars in my seventy-nine years, and the last one was a 1973 Chevy Blazer. Every vehicle I've bought since has had a previous owner. Our refrigerator is twenty years old, too. I suspect Elon and I have somewhat different ideas about what constitutes a financial sacrifice.

But here's the best part. Several of the candidates I supported WON! And the ones who didn't win themselves helped get out more votes for those who did. Meanwhile, most of the folks Elon spent a pittance of his fortune trying to elect went down to defeat.

So I reckon this old schoolteacher got a considerably better return on his political investment than the richest man in the world.

And there's one final difference between us.

Elon Musk responded to the election results with a shrug.

Y'all know I hollered loud enough to wake the dead with each new victory Tuesday night. And every holler came through a great big GRIN!