Voters in Missouri will follow a new electoral system when the presidential nominating contest kicks off in 2024.
When Missouri enacted an elections law in late June, much of the reaction focused on the new voter identification requirements and the establishment of early in-person voting. But lawmakers also moved the state away from primary elections in favor of a caucus system for presidential elections.
Missouri joins a short list of states (Iowa, Nevada, North Dakota and Wyoming) and territories (American Samoa, Guam and the Virgin Islands) that use caucuses at a time when states have been abandoning the caucus system.
Though Missouri used presidential caucuses in 1992 and 1996, the state has held open primaries since the 2000 election. But, those elections were nonbinding, meaning that each party could choose whether to respect the results of the vote.
Caucuses represent a different attitude towards elections than primaries, focusing on the most enthusiastic partisans rather than widespread voter participation. The Republican and Democratic parties run the caucuses themselves, convening registered party members to discuss and assign delegates for their candidates, though procedure differs by state and party.
Primaries, on the other hand, are run by the states, with participation dictated by law. The primaries can be designated as either closed, where only voters registered for a specific party may participate, or open to all voters.
According to an analysis by PBS, while the caucus system attracts enthusiastic and knowledgeable voters, the dedication and time that’s necessary to make the system work means many voters will be alienated and excluded.
Caucuses have also been criticized for their tendency to take place for only a few hours in select locations far away from a voter’s usual precinct, meaning the disenfranchisement of voters who cannot attend for financial or logistical reasons.
Some of the states that still maintain their caucus system have tried to make them more inclusive in recent years.
- Nevada Democrats provided caucus materials in three languages — Tagalog, English and Spanish — in 2020 and allowed early voting rather than mandating voters attend in person.
- That same year, North Dakota allowed voters to participate by mail as long as the ballot was postmarked at least one week before the caucus.
- The Wyoming Democratic Party switched to a ranked choice voting system for its 2020 presidential caucus, allowing candidates to rank five candidates on their ballot. The party also allowed early voting.
Voters also tend to turn out at higher rates in primary elections than in caucuses. Between 2016 and 2020, four states — Maine, Minnesota, Colorado and Utah — switched from a caucus to the primary system. In all four states, voter turnout in the Democratic primaries increased dramatically. In Colorado, for instance, the vote count grew from about 122,000 in the 2016 presidential caucus to more than 755,000 in the 2020 primary — six times as many voters.
In 2020, the Iowa presidential caucus was marred by an inability to accurately report the results in a timely manner. The state’s Democratic Party blamed a third-party smartphone app for delaying the release of the caucus and had to enter the results manually.
The app’s developers, Shadow Inc., later apologized for the delay, saying while the app’s data collection worked as planned, its ability to transmit that information did not.
NPR reported there was not enough training or research done on the app’s capabilities before the caucus. The state had also changed reporting guidelines before the caucus, mandating that the parties submit alignment totals as well as delegate allocations, to increase transparency.
Nevada did not use the app for its caucus later that month.
A golden tray sits on the Resolute Desk as President Donald Trump speaks during an announcement on American nuclear innovation in the Oval Office at the White House on July 24, 2026, in Washington, D.C. Trump is signing multiple executive orders targeting the nuclear energy sector and easing rules for new reactors and nuclear fuel supply chains.
Trump’s hubris rivals the fallen heroes of ancient Greek mythology
In January, the New York Times asked President Donald Trump if there were any limits on his global powers.
“Yeah,” the president responded, “there is one thing. My own morality. My own mind. It’s the only thing that can stop me.”
That was eight months ago, but fortunately Christopher Nolan’s blockbuster adaptation of “The Odyssey” has made ancient Greek literature newly relevant. Before that window closes, I’d like to talk about hubris.
Today, the term mostly means excessive pride or arrogance. That’s part of what the Greeks meant by it too, but the meaning was a bit richer and more specific. Hubris was an insolent or outrageous act that offended the gods, often because the transgressor was claiming abilities or authorities that solely belonged to supreme beings.
Nolan renamed and slightly modified the concept of xenia for the film, calling it “Zeus’ law.” In the director’s telling, mortals should follow the rules laid out by the gods, specifically the requirement to treat strangers with respect lest they be gods in disguise.
In a sense, hubris is the opposite, or at least the rejection, of xenia. The hubris of the suitors, and at times Odysseus himself, invites punishment by the gods and their mortal instruments.
Which brings me back to Donald Trump. His claim that there are no constraints on his personal power to dictate events on the global stage was one of the greatest expressions of hubris ever uttered by a political leader.
Trump’s claim was obviously false when he made it.
He vowed that he could end the Russia-Ukraine war in 24 hours. He’s proved powerless to make that happen. If he had divine powers to work his will, why would he have balked at implementing his tariffs so often that Wall Street adopted the “TACO trade” term for his deals? “TACO” stands for “Trump always chickens out.”
And why would Trump have made so many embarrassing concessions to China — from rescinding tariffs on Chinese goods to allowing them to buy crucial and incredibly valuable computer chips?
But Trump saw his success at capturing Venezuelan strongman Nicolas Maduro as proof of his ability to launch missiles to the same effect as Zeus’ lightning bolts. Trump believed he was the most powerful man who ever lived.
This is no exaggeration. In March, when the Iran invasion seemed successful, Trump gave a document penned by“Presidential Historian David King” to New York Times reporters Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan purporting to prove that Trump was “the most powerful person to have EVER walked this planet.” King was, in fact, a businessman and occasional caddy for legendary golfer Gary Player.
King compared Trump favorably to many of history’s most powerful, and often heinous, figures: Alexander the Great, Attila the Hun, William the Conqueror, Napoleon Bonaparte, Joseph Stalin, Genghis Khan, Mao Tse Tung, Adolf Hitler and Vladimir Lenin. Many of these men thought they were the most powerful person in the world, too. And many were defeated precisely because they believed it.
At least Napoleon and Hitler had a string of truly impressive victories before they learned the folly of hubris. The limits on Trump’s power have been exposed by far less august forces than the combined might of the allies in World War II or the fearsome Russian winter.
Iran is a comparatively middling power. But the regime’s ability to absorb punishment while imposing its will on the Strait of Hormuz has proved to be a greater constraint on Trump’s power than his morality or mind. We should note that, at least rhetorically, his morality has not proved much of a constraint. He has repeatedly promised to destroy Iranian “civilization” if the regime refuses to capitulate.
But they haven’t — and won’t anytime soon — because the regime’s tolerance for pain far outstrips Trump’s. The combined fear of skyrocketing oil prices, outrage of Gulf state potentates, diminishing weapon supplies and domestic unpopularity is doing the work that international law, congressional oversight and the collective opinion of foreign policy experts can’t or won’t do.
If I considered Trump more heroic than reason and facts could allow, I would say his Sisyphean predicament has the whiff of Greek tragedy to it. Trump is vexed by the fact that the Iranians won’t honor deals or ratify his countless premature claims of victory — giving new meaning to his vow that his presidency would make people tired of winning. It’s almost like they’re out-Trumping Trump.
Things might have gone better if he’d heeded that great Greek tragedian Sophocles: “For Zeus utterly abhors the boasts of a proud tongue.”
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Jonah Goldberg is editor-in-chief of The Dispatch and the host of The Remnant podcast. His Twitter handle is @JonahDispatch.