5 Ways Both Parties Are Basically Buying Votes

Elon Musk’s $1 million daily giveaway to registered voters who sign his PAC’s petition has sparked “vote buying” accusations, but the Tesla chief and Donald Trump supporter isn’t the only one shopping political quid pro quos. (Reuters)

Cards Against Humanity: The raunchy party game company is offering money (up to $100) to individual “blue-leaning” nonvoters to get them to the polls.

“Opportunity agenda”: Last week, the Harris-Walz campaign unveiled a package of programs targeted at black men (an important voting bloc that is drifting away from Dems), which included one million fully forgivable $20,000 loans for black entrepreneurs.

Loan forgiveness: Democrats have the become the party of the college-educated, which likely has something to do with the Biden-Harris administration continuing to remind voters of its historic approval of $175 billion in student debt relief.

No taxes on … anything: Trump has called for an end to taxes on overtime pay.

• Both he and Kamala Harris have called for “no taxes on tips” as well as an expansion of the child tax credit.

Bonus: Trump has floated the idea of the government paying for IVF treatments.

• Harris has proposed raising the federal minimum wage and providing $25,000 in down payment assistance for first-time homebuyers.

Bubba’s Two Cents

In some ways, this isn’t necessarily that unusual or bad. Politics is about delivering tangible benefits for the members of your coalition. But usually these handouts are incorporated into a broader vision for bettering the country or disguised with rhetoric that plays up their universal appeal. That’s not the case with the above items, which mostly come across as transparent vote grabs. My take is it’s a sign of how close the race is likely to be and how each party is trying to squeeze every last vote out, no matter the (literal) cost.