Krucoff, a commercial real estate broker, ran unsuccessfully as an independent candidate to be the non-voting delegate from the District of Columbia in the House of Representatives.
It was just prior to my first midterm exam in microeconomics when I learned that a company ideally should keep producing so long as it can make money by doing it. In other words, once the marginal cost of production exceeds the marginal revenue from that production it is quitting time. And his concept applies beyond the world of production: When the potential cost of doing something (like voting) outweighs the potential benefit from that activity, then that activity makes no sense to do anymore.
Suppose I wanted to vote a few times, maybe in a different city or state, or as a different person, would I? In 2020, I voted in the District of Columbia where I live now and where I have lived for most of my life. However, as recently as the 2016 election I lived and voted in Maryland. Last November, could I have first voted at my present precinct in the District of Columbia, then driven a few miles to the north and walked into my old Montgomery County precinct and voted again? The answer is no, because Maryland canceled my registration. It turns out that 30 states (including Maryland) and the District of Columbia are member of a highly efficient and cost-effective non-profit called the Electronic Registration and Information Center. ERIC shared the fact that after I registered with the Board of Elections in D.C., Maryland canceled me. So, had I tried to vote twice in this manner I would have been unsuccessful and possibly arrested.
Now suppose I knew someone was not going to vote last year. Maybe that person passed away. Should I have attempted to vote for that person in addition to voting for myself? Here again the obvious answer is no. So long as I have a basic sense of risk versus reward, I should not do this. The potential marginal benefit of my one additional vote would not be worth the risk of me committing a crime that could put me in jail for multiple years in addition to incurring a significant fine.
Voting twice is illegal in federal elections under federal law. Voters who cast "votes more than once in an election" will be fined "not more than $10,000" and "imprisoned not more than five years, or both," according to federal law. The juice is not worth the squeeze. Go ahead and do it but do not expect it to be a popular course of action. You probably will not get caught but is it worth it?
Lastly, the miniscule benefit of an additional vote must be combined with the possibility that if one disregards the micro-econ analysis, then he or she also may be canceled out by a micro-econ denier on the other side of the aisle. Again, it is just not worth it unless one attempts to commit voter fraud in large numbers, and if someone tries that he or she increases his or her chances of getting caught by orders of magnitude. The squeeze is coming.
A significant cohort of congressional Republicans, led by our former commander in chief, have been blathering about voter fraud prior to our national election in November and even after the ugly insurrectional events of Jan. 6. They are correct that voter fraud could and, I think, should be made harder to commit. However, we all can rest assured that their macro concerns about voter fraud's pull on our elections are routinely pushed back by obvious individual voter cost benefit analysis inherent from micro-econ 101.
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.