Slow Boring

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.”