Deliverism

 Thomas Edsall had a piece yesterday in the New York Times about a city in the American southwest that had received millions of dollars in subsidies under the Biden administration's clean energy policies. 

Despite this largesse under a Democratic administration, and the resulting jobs and economic stimulus—the city's voting share that went to Trump and the Republicans only increased in the last election. 

Edsall uses this datum to suggest that the Democrats' old theory of "deliverism"—according to which delivering benefits to people will increase support for Democratic politicians—has failed. 

“Throughout Joe Biden’s presidency, there was a notion that a politician can win votes by delivering benefits to voters — also known as ‘deliverism.’”

In practice, the Biden administration’s deliverism strategy failed to deliver politically, both across the nation and especially — and emblematically — in Texarkana.

Arthur Koestler could have told them as much. He includes a little parable about the fate of "deliverism" in his book, Scum of the Earth—his memoir about France on the eve of the Second World War. 

He notes that in rural France, the socialist government of Leon Blum had actually increased payments to farmers by cutting out private monopolists and purchasing directly from local producers. 

In Koestler's telling—this only inflamed antisemitic suspicions against Blum's left-wing government. If they had money lying around to increase payments—who knew how much they were holding back? 

The French fascist party—bankrolled in part by those same private monopolists whom the government had cut out of the market—of course was behind these rumors. But people fell for them anyway. 

Perhaps—Koestler had to realize—he and the rest of the Left had failed to understand people. For all their talk over decades of the "masses," they really didn't have the first clue as to how the latter thought. 

And neither do we. Perhaps it's time we admit as much.

"I don't know it to this day"—to borrow a line from Gottfried Benn (Hofmann trans.)—"and now must go myself."