Richard Davies is a podcast consultant, host and solutions journalist at daviescontent.com. He co-hosts the podcasts “How Do We Fix It?” and “Let’s Find Common Ground."
Here’s one thing progressives, liberals, moderates, conservatives and even many populists can agree on: The primary system in most states is broken. They all might even say, “It’s rigged!”
In a surprisingly large number of states, only registered Democrats and Republicans have been allowed to vote in this year’s primaries. The largest self-identified group of voters — independents — was shut out of the process. According to new survey data compiled by Unite America, a nonpartisan political organization that backs electoral reform, only 8.2 percent of eligible voters have cast ballots in primaries that have decided more than 80 percent of Congress.
Now that primary voting season is nearly complete, we’ve again witnessed a system that discourages turnout and boosts support for rigid partisans, who seek to rally their party base at the the cost of making deals with politicians from opposing parties.
“The way our system is set up right now, candidates have an incentive in a Republican primary to go as far right as possible. Candidates in a Democratic [primary] go as far left as possible, because the people who vote in these elections are die-hard voters,” said Story Hinckley, national political reporter at the Christian Science Monitor. “Candidates are trying to appeal to the people who turn out and they are often the most extreme voters,”
Gerrymandered districts, with electoral maps drawn by the two political parties instead of independent commissions, make the problem worse. Most members of Congress come from deep red or blue districts.
The primary process wasn’t supposed to work this way. For many decades candidates were chosen by party bosses in “smoked-filled rooms.” But then came the 1960s. Popular movements for civil rights, women’s rights and widespread opposition to the U.S.-led war in Vietnam resulted in social and political changes. The old way of picking presidential candidates, governors and members of Congress was swept away.
The idea was that public participation in primaries would let many more people into the process, giving them a much bigger say in who’s picked to run in the November general election.
The old system “left the party with some say over who represented the party,” said constitutional law scholar Rick Pildes. “I think the primary system that we have is one of the significant threats to the democratic system,” he explained on the latest episode of Common Ground Committee’s “ Let’s Find Common Ground ” podcast.
“The concern is that the candidates who have the broadest appeal in a general election aren’t able to get through the primaries.”
This may well be the case in some prominent races this November. For instance, Trump-backed Republicans in several Northeastern states won their party primaries, but are now considered underdogs in races that were easily won by the GOP four years ago. Highly popular moderate Republican governors in Massachusetts and Maryland decided not to run for re-election. Party nominees for November’s election are much more rigidly partisan.
Last month, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell predicted “a greater likelihood” that the House will flip from Democratic to Republican control than the Senate. “Senate races are just different — they are statewide, candidate quality has a lot to do with the outcome,” he told a Chamber of Commerce meeting in Kentucky.
“McConnell has long worried that subpar candidates could play into Democrats' hands,” reported NBC News.
On “Let’s Find Common Ground,” we heard sharp criticisms of the primary process from former Democratic and Republican party leaders and members of Congress.
Former Rep. David Jolly, who left the GOP to become one of the founders of a new third party, Forward, told us that America’s way of picking candidates for public office is an outlier.
“The United States is alone on an island with an entrenched duopoly. Most leading nations today have multiparty democracies with three, four or five competitive parties, and the data shows that voters feel better represented,” Jolly said. In many democracies overseas, “they have better policy outcomes.”
What kind of reforms should we consider?
Ranked-choice voting is one. Open primaries are another. Alaska’s passage of a ballot initiative in 2020 radically overhauled the system, getting rid of the state’s party-run primaries. Today in Alaska, political parties no longer select their candidates to appear on the general election ballot. Instead, open primaries allow for all voters to be involved.
Listen here for more criticisms of today’s primary problem and what may be done to improve it.
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.