“Vote Republican. I’ll give you $5,000.”
That’s Donald Trump’s mid-term pitch, and in addition to underscoring how desperate The White House thinks the situation might be, the promise of cash handouts is quintessentially populist.
I won’t pretend to have read a large sample of mainstream media articles covering Trump’s characteristically brazen attempt to buy votes (remember: it’s not illegal if you do it in plain sight), but my guess is that the populist angle didn’t get a lot of play.
To the extent that’s true, it’s understandable: Trump’s far-fetched quid pro quo raises a lot of obvious questions, some of them urgent in the macro-market context. Leading with political theory thus isn’t the most natural editorial choice.
But it’s important to acknowledge that populists have an observable propensity for diverting public resources to clientelistic initiatives.
That isn’t unique or exclusive to populists, of course. But populist governments, and particularly those which double as personality cults, do exhibit a natural affinity for what, in the political science context, is formalized as “discretionary distribution.”
There’s a simple explanation for that affinity, and for why populist clientelism tends toward literal cash-for-vote schemes, the crudest of all quid pro quos. In simple terms: Handing out money transforms a leader’s purported bond with “the people” into something highly tangible.
What differentiates populist clientelism is the emphasis on creating a direct, undeniable link between the leader (or the party) and the distributions (in this case cash handouts), such that there can be no doubt about who “the people” should thank.
Apropos, Trump’s calling the proposed payouts, which he floated on Wednesday evening during a speech in Dallas, a “Trump dividend.” You can be sure he’d insist on signing the checks himself (the same way he demanded his name be printed on stimulus checks during the pandemic), and with any luck, at least some of the people who cashed their “Trump dividend” checks would receive physical banknotes bearing his signature (Trump this year became the first sitting president to have his John Hancock on paper currency).
What little mainstream media coverage of Trump’s proposed “dividend” payments I read Thursday emphasized the legislative hurdles to clearing the checks (figuratively and literally) in the event the promise of free money is enough to keep Republicans in power on the Hill.
While those hurdles are real and may indeed prove too high for Trump to clear, it’s important to note that any Republican who opposed Trump’s payouts would play right into his narrative.
Populists everywhere and always frame clientelistic transfers as a direct, me-to-you end-around that circumvents the bureaucratic processes of an “establishment” that’s “rigged” against “the people.” Do you really want to be that guy or that gal? The ingrate “RINO” who denies to “the people” their “Trump dividend”?
Consider that food for thought, and remember: A hallmark of clientelism, and particularly populist clientelism, is the squandering of a nation’s public resources on absurdist initiatives, including and especially Hail Mary handouts and subsidy schemes to secure votes when the chips are down.
Just when you think you have heard it all, Trump delivers another unbelievable thing.
Tony Soprano would say ” here’s your taste”.
When will the republican party return from the Twilight Zone?
US10Y @ 4.922% as I type this. I wonder how The House feels about this?
H, your buying opportunity may be imminent…
‘I’m going to borrow $5000 @ ~ 200 million, at an interest rate of 5% or more , so that’s 1.2 trillion , give or take, and you are going to pay the interest on that for years to come , for that $5000 cheque I’m trying to buy your vote with’
“Inanity”
Can we pay the coupons w/ PIK?
He can pay for it in $Trump coins
I assume that’ll undo anything positive Bessent achieved yesterday!
So much for inflation fighting. Tonight he’ll promise to make Kevin cut 200bp. Tomorrow Iran will know they’ve won.
One has to wonder what Bessent is thinking watching this….
Or whether its Navarro giving him this crazy idea that we can “pay it with the tariff money” in between yelling at Fox News and demanding CEO ousters
https://thehill.com/homenews/media/6079001-navarro-fox-news-bartiromo-ouster/
There’s a lot of people that barely keep up with politics that are going to see the headline and really believe they have a shot at $5,000. Let freedumb ring!
I’m going to spend my freedumb check on a vacation to Lake America!
Why not New America? Santa Fe is nice in the fall…
Don’t you mean Saint Free(dom)? Santa Fe sounds too foreign
The real beauty of this hollow promise of an ex-post bribe is that when it fails to materialize, he can blame the Democrats.
I really think that’s the whole plan for 2028: blame the Democrats for anything and everything which goes wrong after they retake the House. “This never would have happened if we were in charge” doesn’t make for the catchiest campaign slogan, but it probably beats whatever the opposition will come up with.
Idiocracy blames the Dumbocrats. Heck that might make a good Heisenberg report headline.
I haven’t voted for a republican (deliberate lower case “r”) since Gerald Ford, but now I can’t pass up this deal.
By my he latest count this is his fourth promise of money for your vote. I haven’t gotten anything yet. During the early years of the Great Depression any “Blue State” election could be bought with an Army blanket in the central part of a big city. One blanket, one vote.
He’s overpaying. 20% would sell their vote for $100:
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/1532673X211013565
$5000 for you, $2bn for me.
From a political advertisement run by the Republican party during the 1928 Presidential election:
“The Republican Party isn’t a poor man’s party. . . . Republican efficiency has filled the workingman’s dinner pail – and his gasoline tank besides. And placed the whole nation in the silk stocking class. . . . Republican prosperity has reduced hours and increased earning capacity, silenced discontent, put the proverbial ‘chicken in every pot.’ And a car in every backyard, to boot.” [Emphasis theirs.]
Herbert Hoover won that election, and for years after the stock market collapsed, and The Great Depression began, disgruntled American voters would ask where the chickens, cars, and silk stockings they had all been promised were. Adjusting for inflation, a chicken and a car — with a full tank of gas — was a much better deal back then than a mere $5,000 is now. (Not to mention the silk stockings.)
You can view the entire two-page ad here:
https://docsteach.org/document/chicken-in-every-pot/
What an incredible link. Can you imagine an ad today–for anything–that’s just a 16 paragraph wall of text? How things change…
How advertising and psychology have wittled humanity back to to monosyllables
The entire ad is a scream, especially when compared to our current Republican party. My favorite paragraph is the last:
“[The Republican party’s] Presidential and Congressional candidates stand for election on a platform of sound practice, Federal vigilance, high tariff, Constitutional integrity, the conservation of natural resources, honest and constructive measures for agricultural relief, sincere enforcement of the laws, and the right of all citizens, regardless of faith or origin, to share the benefits of opportunity and justice.”
At some point, they also refer to “[passing] more laws to regulate and purify immigration.” [Emphasis mine.] At least some things haven’t changed.
“the squandering of a nation’s public resources on absurdist initiatives,”
Ooh, Ooh! I’ve got one! How about Trump’s arch? Likely will have Trump written on it in gold leaf, too.