Beyond that, Democrats can’t control federal contracting.

What Democrats can do, though, is address the extremely large explicit and implicit subsidies that Tesla receives both from the federal government and — most importantly — from blue states where Democrats govern.

I want to be clear: I am not saying that Democrats should shift their policy toward electric cars just to stick it to Elon Musk. What I am saying is that there are many questions one can raise about the merits of Democrats’ current policy approach to electric cars. The whole framework deviates massively from a technocratic optimum of “subsidize nothing, finance roads with a vehicle miles traveled tax, and impose an extra tax on gasoline to cover the pollution externalities.”