The question this November will be can Chicago politics trump grassroots organization?

Consider that millions of low-income people who need a job — even a fake government job — to buy food that they need now will be incentivized to elect Obama, even if it is against their long term interst to do so. From a certain point of view, a government led jobs recovery can become a massive vote-buying scheme. It’s a sad sight.

I remember describing elsewhere how voters in a Third World country will sell their vote for a ten bucks and bottle of gin, even when they know it simply puts the bad guys back in office. They need the ten bucks now and the bottle of gin to drown out the sorrows now. And tomorrow can take care of itself.

While the middle class remained strong this kind of vote-buying was hard to pull off. But if a sufficient number of people are pauperized, then an opportunity for permanent power presents itself to those who are willing to take advantage of the crisis. If enough of the electorate is desperate enough, then yes, you can buy votes. The thing is, when you see how hard up people have become, you can’t hardly blame them. It’s a very cynical exercise, but then we are dealing with politicians.

This dynamic suggests that economic hardship to some extent favors the Obama strategy. The worse off people are, the more they have to rely on these “incentives”. They have nothing else to fall back on but Hope. And Hope is what he’s going to hold out, like a carrot dangled in front of a starving donkey.