What is the Overton Window and Why Is Elon Musk Breaking It?

Elon Musk Bought Twitter to Make the Unacceptable Acceptable. And It's Working.

So many political science terms, so little time.

As I meet with more and more people from the upper tiers of Democratic Party politics it is becoming clear to me that there are key findings from peer-reviewed political science research that simply never trickled down to the general public.

Long time subscribers to this distinguished ‘Stack should know two of those political science concepts well by now: 1. the strength of party identification on public opinion and vote choice for the vast majority of the electorate and 2. the stunningly low levels of civic knowledge of American voters.

Today, I want to talk about a third concept known as the Overton window.

What is the Overton Window? Put simply, the Overton Window refers to what is considered acceptable in a political culture.

For example, once upon a time it was considered unacceptable to plot a coup and call a mob to attack the Capitol to hold onto power after losing reelection.

In fact, prior to Trump’s 2016 run, something as insignificant as having a campaign trail Baby Mama was seen as disqualifying for the presidency.

The first time Elon Musk tweeted about the Overton Window it became clear to me that smart people had made this a core objective of his purchase of Twitter.

Could the world’s richest man using the world’s largest megaphone redefine what is acceptable in American politics?

Early in his reign as the arbiter of truthiness, Elon was focused on moving the Overton Window on transgenderism. When he purchase Twitter in 2022, just two weeks before the 2022 midterms, one of the first changes to the platform Elon ordered were to remove protections against misgendering people.

He was also interested in normalizing the discourse of the alt-Right, bringing previously fringe shit like the Great Replacement Theory into the mainstream of Republican politics.

Again, Great Replacement Theory is the argument that Latinos and other non-White immigrants are migrating to America in order to take control of the country away from White people.

Through algorithm manipulations and the unmatched power of an Elon RT, over the course of the last 3 years I’ve watched as rhetoric once confined to neo-Nazi meetings became popular policy appeals on the Right.

And Elon saw the true power of his new platform.

Since then, Elon has used his megaphone to push the Overton Window open on a host of things including getting Republican voters to accept things like DOGE, pushing Republicans to abandon Ukraine, and most recently, to get Republican voters to accept destroying our checks and balances system by discrediting the courts.

Here is just a small sample of the dozens of daily tweets America’s real president has put out in his effort to make ignoring the courts acceptable.

Musk even takes to Twitter to brag about his work using unilateral control of the world’s largest megaphone to intentionally “open” the Overton Window “wide.”

Unlike gender pronouns, the Separation of Powers system is one of the most fundamental values Americans hold. Recent polling from Marquette University finds when asked if the president has the power to ignore court rulings, 83% of adults agree with the statement “the president is required to do what the ruling says.”

Between them, Donald Trump and Elon Musk have already moved the Overton Window so wide Republican voters support Russia and tariffs.

With the propaganda machine the Right has, anything is possible.

And if you are wondering if I am intentionally “misgendering” X by calling it Twitter, I would never do something like that.