Palmer is chairman of Rank the Vote and a member of the board of the National Association of Nonpartisan Reformers.
Beyond being kidney-punched in the Capitol or censured by colleagues, the biggest threat a compromise-minded member of Congress faces these days comes from a primary election challenge. Being “primaried” for displaying insufficient partisanship is the quickest route out of Congress. The prime example is former Rep. Liz Cheney, the one-time GOP darling who crossed her Trump-dominated party and failed to win her renomination bid by a 2-to-1 margin.
Thanks to gerrymandered congressional districts, the winner of the favored party’s primary is assured a general election victory in all but about 10 percent of House races. Worse, primaries are low-turnout embarrassments for democracy that favor extremist elements in the party. When first elected to Congress in 2016, Republican firebrand Matt Gaetz received votes from just 7 percent of his Florida district’s voters in the GOP primary. But that was all he needed for a resounding general election win in his ruby-red district. Similarly, in her first congressional election in 2018, far-left Democrat Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez's easy win in November came after she won a low-turnout primary with the support of less than 5 percent of the registered voters in her district.
Fortunately, there is a novel solution to lessen the Grand Canyon of space between our two polarized parties. Alaska’s system – passed by a ballot initiative in 2020 – features nonpartisan primaries and instant-runoff general elections, and it marks a first in American elections. All candidates for state and federal office appear on the same nonpartisan ballot, regardless of party. The top four vote-getters advance to the general election, where ranked-choice voting determines the winner.
The results from the model’s 2022 debut were encouraging. The nationally newsworthy winners were Republican Sen. Lisa Murkowski, whom former President Donald Trump vocally tried to have challenged in the primary, and Democratic Rep. Mary Peltola. Both are considered centrists and prevailed over the more extreme candidates who likely would have won in the old system.
Intraparty competition came out of the shadows of closed partisan primaries into the limelight of the (higher-turnout) general elections in down-ballot races as well. In six different stateSenate races, two Republicans advanced to face each other in November. Independents, Democrats and other non-Republicans played a part in determining the winners, benefitting the more moderate candidates. The right-leaning think tank R Street assessed that the winner in each of these six contests would have lost in a Republican-only primary.
The new Alaskan playing field is also more level for independent or minor-party candidates. While third or fourth candidates are typically shouted down as “spoilers” in most American elections (witness reaction to Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.’s independent presidential efforts and Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin’s “No Labels” flirtation), Alaska’s instant-runoff approach silences the “wasted vote” argument. Encouragingly, six independents won seats in the Alaska State Legislature in 2022.
Lastly, analysts report that 44 percent more Alaska races had competitive margins and that half as many candidates ran unopposed compared to the prior election cycle. The upshot is that more moderate candidates won in Alaska in 2022 and more Alaskans’ votes mattered.
What happened once these legislators elected arrived in Juneau and Washington, D.C., is even more important: They no longer were looking over their shoulder at the prospect of primary challenges. Knowing they would face all voters in their next primary – not just the most devout partisans – they knew they needed to answer the question “How are you serving your district?” rather than “Are you keeping party bosses happy?”
Other states are taking notice of Alaska’s innovation. Nevada has taken the first step to copy Alaska’s approach, passing in 2022 a “Final Five Voting” initiative. (It needs to pass again in 2024 to comply with Nevada’s constitutional rules.) And in Colorado, businessman-turned-reformer Kent Thiry has just announced he will lead an effort to put a referendum similar to Alaska’s on the ballot. Credible nonpartisan primary reform efforts are also under way in Arizona, Idaho and Wisconsin.
The hope among those of us supporting primary reform is that Alaska’s new system will continue to produce less-polarized lawmakers who will in turn be able to work together more effectively to advance public policy. There’s also hope that it levels the playing field for those running from outside the two major parties. While it’s early yet to assess the impact of a voting innovation in one thinly populated state, we can scarcely do worse than the gridlocked insanity of the status quo in Washington. Isn’t it time we shake things up in the Lower 48 as well?
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.