Whitman is a former Republican governor of New Jersey and co-chair of the Forward Party.
The two dominant political parties in America don’t agree on much, but there is one thing they agree on: The system should be set up to help them maintain their power. From first-past-the-post voting and gerrymandering to limiting citizen-powered ballot initiatives, Republicans and Democrats have done their best to build a system that strips the power from the people and keeps it in the parties’ hands.
Voters are fighting back, however. And we will all be the better for it.
The headlines of the 2022 elections focused, of course, on control of the House, Senate and governors’ mansions. But the subhead — easy to miss — was a wave of reforms, particularly for ranked-choice voting. Nevada led the way, passing a ballot measure which will institute the practice across the entire state if it passes again in two years. Nine other cities and counties also voted on voting reform, with RCV passing in seven of them. If you factor in approval voting reforms that have passed — a similar change to our method of voting — more than 15 million Americans will be able to more freely express their politics through new and better election processes in the coming years.
With an 80 percent electoral success rate, it’s hard to imagine an issue more popular right now than citizen-powered reform. With all of the enthusiasm behind these reforms, you might think that the major parties would be clamoring to support them. Sadly, their desire to keep power to themselves is causing them to fight against these improvements. There’s only one national party working for reforms that empower the people and give them choice: the Forward Party.
In Connecticut, the Griebel Frank Party — part of the Forward Party Alliance — endorsed Democratic Gov. Ned LaMont after he came out in favor of RCV and said he’d support legislation implementing it in the state. In Nevada, a coalition of reformers, including many Forward in-state leaders, led the charge to pass the RCV ballot initiative.
Compare that with two states where the existing parties tried to use the initiative process itself to make electoral reform more difficult, or even impossible. In Arkansas, they tried to require a supermajority for ballot initiatives. In Arizona, the Legislature wanted the power to change or repeal these initiatives entirely. Both efforts were rejected by voters who cherish their right to self rule.
Unfortunately, in 24 more states — almost half the country — the parties have effectively ended the ability for citizens to lead reform through referenda or ballot initiatives. Reform is left entirely up to the people who are usually least interested in it — the elected leaders of the legacy parties.
Putting electoral reform on the ballot in those states means electing reformers to office. And to do that, we first must recruit them and put them on the ballot. Republican and Democratic leaders aren’t interested in that. The Nevada Democratic Party fought ranked-choice voting as stridently as the Alaska GOP has.
And so, if we want a new kind of politics across the country — a better politics — it can’t come from within the same staid parties that only work together when it protects their mutual power. They’ll band together to fight against returning choice and power to the American people. Reform has to come from outside the system — and that’s where the Forward Party comes in. The Forward Party will be the vehicle for true reformers to run for office.
And we will win.
We are building our state party infrastructures and getting access to the ballot in key states across the country. Forward candidates will be on the ballot in 2023, and we will embrace the reformers who get tossed aside by the existing parties as a threat to their stranglehold on our political processes.
Republican and Democratic party leaders would like you to think that there is no better way than the status quo. But America is waking up from that deterministic thinking. Many things define a Forward Party member, but perhaps the most fundamental trait is that we won’t stop looking for a better way to get things done.
That is our calling now: to take off the blinders and examine in earnest the system that has brought us to this era of discontent and discord. And then, just as countless brave Americans before us have done, get to the work of making a better, freer, more equitable system. Let’s undertake that patriotic work together, starting today.
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.