There are a few things I don’t like about Paul Krugman’s “Muskenfreude” piece about the enjoyment he’s getting from seeing Elon Musk hoisted on his on petard. Let me start by saying Krugman is offering analysis rather than advocacy, so that’s how I’m judging it. But, admittedly, part of my problem is that Krugman is serving as a poor advocate.

As things stand, the U.S. Senate has passed their version of the One Big Beautiful Bill and sent it over to the U.S. House of Representatives for rubber-stamping. The Wall Street Journal reports that the House Republicans are disinclined to perform this duty. The New York Times notes the reluctance and writes that getting the rubber-stamp will be “the Biggest Test Yet of His Second-Term Political Power.”  What does Krugman say?

So the Senate has passed the One Big Beautiful Bill Act. True, it could still be blocked if House Republicans stood by their principles. But they won’t. This monstrosity will become the law of the land, and tens of millions of Americans will suffer so that billionaires can pay lower taxes.

If Krugman believes the House will pass the Senate version without changes, that’s fine. He could be correct. But it’s a confident prediction to make without one sentence of explanation. And it makes this next sentence seem like begging the question: “Musk’s opposition predictably made no difference.” We won’t know if Musk’s vocal and vituperative opposition to the One Big Beautiful Bill made any difference until we see what the House does. After all, Musk has threatened any Republican who votes for it with a primary challenge. It seems premature to talk about Musk’s influence here in the past tense.

There are a lot of people, including a united House Democratic caucus, who are still trying to defeat the Senate version of the bill in the House. Perhaps their efforts should be amplified rather than dismissed as doomed. But, again, if this is Krugman’s prediction, and he wants to stick to straight analysis, that’s fine. It’s just that I don’t care for the lack of fighting spirit.

It actually matters a lot whether or not the House will agree to pass the Senate version without changes. If they do, the political fallout for the Republicans and the consequences for the country could be catastrophic. But if they make even one amendment to the language of the bill, it will go back to the Senate for another round of negotiations and votes, which will delay things. And delay is the enemy of this bill because it is incredibly unpopular and will grow more unpopular every day as people learn how it will screw them.

My next problem is that Krugman criticizes Musk for suggesting that the reason the bill is going to explode the deficit is because it’s filled with pork when the actual reason is “the huge tax breaks it’s offering to the wealthy and corporations.” That’s not entirely true. The Senate bill has an increase in $350 billion on immigration issues, “including $46 billion for the U.S.-Mexico border wall, $45 billion for 100,000 migrant detention facility beds…and $10 billion in grants for states that help with federal immigration enforcement and deportation actions.”

The bill also has an increase of more than $150 billion in defense spending, most of which will be spent right away, as “the Pentagon hopes to employ $113 billion of the defense funds in FY26 in order to pay for major weapons investments, including 16 naval ships and a $25 billion down payment on the Golden Dome missile shield.” You can call this pork or something else, but they are actual new expenditures, not simply tax cuts.

Personally, I don’t care why someone opposes this bill. Some people won’t like how it shifts money to the already affluent, but others will object to wasteful or inhumane spending on a border wall or for building detention centers for immigrants. There’s no reason to let any part of this monstrosity off the hook, as Krugman does in his piece.

He’s on firmer ground, however, when he predicts that Musk will back down from challenging Trump because his business interests are too dependent on government contracts. I think Krugman makes an excellent suggestion when he recommends that Musk read Greg Rosalsky’s 2022 article on “How Putin Conquered Russia’s Oligarchy.” I don’t know that Musk will be thrown out a window or put in Alligator Alcatraz, but it’s notable that the president is openly threatening to revoke his citizenship and send him back to South Africa.

As a side note, Musk should have better considered his status as an immigrant before he threw his support behind a white, nationalist fascist movement. Since he’s a white nationalist himself, he obviously thought this would advance his interests. That was a mistake because he’s not entrenched as a member of the “in” group.

So, yes, I agree with Krugman when he predicts Musk doesn’t “hold the cards,” and will soon beat a retreat. I also agree that Musk’s threat to form a new political party “will go nowhere if he tries.” But he’s a proud and powerful man who, as his longtime friend Philip Low described in an interview with Politico “has been humiliated…He’s going to do everything to damage the president.”

The richest man in the world is not without recourse. He may back down and take a less public role, but that doesn’t mean he won’t follow up with efforts to fund challengers to rank-and-file members of Congress who aren’t so much of a threat to him. Just like the president, he’s too vindictive to let things slide. Krugman’s analysis doesn’t account for this and provides false hope to House Republicans that they can support the One Big Beautiful Bill without fear of Musk’s enormous wallet.

When it comes to this fight, there are two pieces of advice I offer from New York Yankee legend and 10-time World Series champion Yogi Berra. Referring to way the sun sets in the eyes of left fielders at the old Yankee Stadium, Berra said, “It gets late early out there.” It’s getting pretty late in the process now, and there’s no more time for fucking around. We need all hands on deck to try to discourage House Republicans from rubber-stamping the Senate bill.

Berra also famously said, “It’s not over until it’s over,” which is true for a game that doesn’t have a clock. The Republicans are trying to pretend there’s a clock on this bill, and have the goal of passing it before July 4th. But there is no actual clock. And the fight can go on past their deadline.

If you want to be a pessimist or a cynic, that may protect you from the pain of being wrong as well as disappointed. But I would suggest that if you want to be valued as an analyst, you should do a better job than Krugman of backing up your argument. I write there is hope precisely because I see the fight as still undecided. At every step, I have reiterated all the reasons why the battle may be lost in the end, but I never gave up because I never saw an actual majority of Republicans that wants to vote for this shitburger. I still don’t.

If they do, it will be because the consequences of failure are too much for them to stomach. And that’s why I’ve never predicted success.

But the battle is still on, and we should not suggest otherwise and demoralize those who are still joined on the field.