Ross Sherman serves as Media Relations Manager with RepresentUs.
Democracy only works when our representatives put our country and the rule of law first. But with the midterms approaching, politicians are so focused on getting wins for their party that they're actually taking steps to weaken our elections.
Republican candidates are running on the lie that the 2020 election was stolen, and excommunicating party members who say otherwise. Meanwhile, Democrats are doubling down on a dangerous political strategy: Financially supporting election deniers in GOP primaries in the hopes they’ll be ‘weaker’ candidates in the general election. As a result, they’re pushing election deniers closer to power and closer to the mainstream. Democrats, including those on the January 6 Committee, should be unified in condemning this practice, but they’re not.
Why is all of this happening in the first place? Because our corrupt political system incentivizes this behavior. Short-term partisan gain clouds our politicians’ decisions and keeps them from doing the right thing. To preserve free elections for generations to come, Republicans should denounce all forms of election denial in their ranks, and Democrats should speak out against boosting election deniers. Without doing so, they not only risk their own credibility, but the credibility of our government as a whole.
Beyond the immediate term, we need to fix these perverse incentives. Republicans and Democrats need to band together to pass laws that fix the underlying flaws in our political system – rendering these tactics irrelevant.
Election denial is a feature of the 2022 primary elections
Many Republican leaders and candidates, including former President Donald Trump, continue to parrot the lie that the 2020 election was stolen. They also dismiss the severity of the January 6 capitol riot. With mountains of evidence confirming a free and fair election, they know it wasn’t stolen. We heard as much in testimony during the hearings from many close to the former president. But they continue to say so anyway in an attempt to rile up their supporters and win the next election.
Let me be clear: No one on the Democratic side is running on a platform of election denial. They have also correctly been warning the country about the threats our democracy faces, and were unified in supporting federal legislation to improve our elections early this year.
But because of the same short-term political incentives, Democrats are simultaneously hoodwinking voters by running political advertisements aiding the most extreme election denier candidates in GOP primaries across the country. While the goal of this strategy is to make the general election easier for their side to win, pushing an election denier closer to power is completely irresponsible – and could backfire.
Democrats have meddled in several races throughout the primary season, including running ads to boost insurrectionist Doug Mastriano’s chances in Pennsylvania’s gubernatorial primary. And while Democrats led the charge to impeach former President Trump for his conduct around January 6, now they've turned around and poured money into a campaign to defeat one of their only Republican allies in the impeachment vote – Michigan Rep. Peter Mejier – in favor of another election denier.
The January 6 Committee must be united against election denial
The January 6 hearings have been a great example of public officials putting country over party. Reps. Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger have shown tremendous courage by telling the truth about January 6 and former President Donald Trump’s culpability. As a result, they’ve faced vicious harassment. Rep. Cheney has barely made public appearances in her Wyoming primary because of credible death threats, and Rep. Kinzinger has shared voicemails he’s received threatening his wife and baby.
On the Democratic side, Rep. Stephanie Murphy condemned her party’s strategy of propping up dangerous candidates in Republican primaries. As she told Axios, “This is bigger than any one candidate or campaign. No one should be promoting election deniers and peddlers of the 'Big Lie.'"
In order to preserve the Committee’s credibility, Democrats should follow her lead and disavow this cynical strategy. It shouldn’t be hard to say that supporting election deniers is wrong.
It’s time for more Democrats and Republicans to put country over party
None of these partisan shenanigans would be happening if we had better elections. If we swapped out closed partisan primaries for open primaries, running on a platform of election denial would be a political nonstarter and meddling in another party’s elections wouldn’t even be an option. With open primaries, every candidate regardless of party appears on the same ballot, and every registered voter can participate.
Another simple way we can chip away at perverse partisan incentives is to adopt Ranked Choice Voting. In RCV elections, voters rank candidates in order of preference. Through an instant runoff system, the eventual winner is guaranteed to win a majority of votes, leading to more acceptable candidates across the political spectrum.
Americans know that our political system is broken. We’re sick of politicians putting their own self interest ahead of what’s best for our country. It’s time for more Democrats, Republicans and everyone in between to stand up for the truth, put country over party, and advance solutions to make our elections work for us, not them.
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.