> some of the more electorally popular policies
There are no electorally popular policies. We vote for people, not policies, and elections are usually popularity contests rather than policy choices. Not to mention that the Overton window is extremely limited in many cases, especially under the US political duopoly.
> Are we talking about the ultra-wealthy or people who can afford Teslas?
The latter. The point was that one can become ultra-wealthy while still ignoring the vast majority of consumers.
> the middle class where most of the consumer activity happens
I wouldn't say that Tesla is a middle class phenomenon. If you divide the population into thirds, calling them upper class, middle class, and lower class (I'm not sure whether this corresponds with the "standard" definition of class, if there is a standard, but that doesn't really matter for this purpose), there's a ton of money to be made by selling to the top third of earners while mostly ignoring everyone else.
> They wanted to decentralise economic power away from the wealthy and repurposed it to the benefit of the people - that was one of the core tenants of socialism.
Who is "They" exactly? Of course Marx wanted that, but he was merely an academic, not the leader of a country. It's not clear that the actual leaders of Communist countries wanted to decentralize economic power, nor did they fully practice the core tenants of socialism. After all, the economy of the Soviet Union was literally termed "central planning".
> Keeping with the Musk example, there is a big contingent of people who think he makes the best car and they centralise a lot of manufacturing power under his leadership.
The total number of Teslas ever sold is fewer than 5 million, and many of those vehicles were sold to repeat customers. The contingent is not that big, compared with the overall population. In my view, this appears to be mostly the upper income bracket empowering the ultra-wealthy.
> Sure, but that isn't ourselves to ourselves. That is from one group (traditionally the middle class because most of the choices about resource allocation happen there) and to a different distinct group (historically varies).
This is missing one of the main points of the article, which is that being part of the top 10% of earners for example is not necessarily a permanent state of existence. It can be temporary and precarious. I've personally been all over the economic map during my lifetime. Economic status is not static.