Behind the battles over ideas and policy proposals, at its core, democratic politics is about buying votes. Sometimes, vote-buying is overtly a cash for ballots arrangement. But in the United States, votes have more often been purchased with the promise of "free" goods and services, paid for through taxes or, increasingly, by running up debt, and justified by empty verbiage about the public good that the scheme will allegedly promote. That makes President Donald Trump's promise of $5,000 "dividend" payments to Americans if his party wins the midterms a jarring return to the open corruption of the politics of the past—or of other country's present experiences.
