Corbin is professor emeritus of marketing at the University of Northern Iowa.
Clowns to the left of me
Jokers to the right
Here I am
Stuck in the middle with you.
These are lyrics from the song “Stuck in the Middle With You,” co-written by Garry Rafferty and Joe Eagan and released by their band, Stealers Wheel, in 1972. The 43 percent of voters who are independent would agree that the line “stuck in the middle” speaks to them and our 2024 presidential election.
On March 12, Joe Biden and Donald Trump locked up their respective political party nominations, starting a 244-day campaign to Nov. 5. Research reveals the vast majority of registered Democrats are committed to vote for Biden despite his octogenarian age (though former special counsel Robert Hur told Congress that the president had “ photographic recall ”).
Likewise, research finds that MAGA Republicans will vote for Trump, regardless of past legal issues (e.g., $83.3 million E. Jean Carroll sexual abuse finding, New York’s $453.5 million Trump Organization litigation, 2005-2021 Trump Organization criminal tax fraud, etc.) and pending cases (2020 federal election interference, Georgia’s RICO case over 2020 election interference, stolen classified documents, 2016 porn star hush-money election interference and 34 counts of falsifying business records).
Research also shows that due to Democratic and Republican polarization, independents will determine – on Nov. 5 – who will be America’s president in 2025.
A number of Democratic and Republican loyalists are turning against their respective party’s designated candidate. Let’s explore that issue.
Joe Biden
Back in the summer of 2022, Politico reported that RootsAction – a left-wing activist group that supported Biden’s 2020 election, tried to persuade him not to run in 2024. Se leve.
There’s sufficient rumbling that some Black, Latino and young voters are suspicious of supporting Biden again in 2024. However, 15 millennials and members of Generation Z recently endorsed Biden and joined the Students for Biden-Harris coalition in arguing that his achievements supersede his age.
Gallup’s annual governance poll reveals 63 percent of voters want a third-party choice. American Bridge, Third Way, MoveOn and Save our Republic PAC – all left-of-center groups – worry the centrist group No Labels and political activists Robert F. Kennedy, Cornel West and Jill Stein will take votes away from Biden.
Third-party candidates are Biden’s biggest re-election threat.
Donald Trump
Turmoil in Trump’s world is more troubling than in the Biden camp. Business Insider reports 40 of Trump’s 44 former cabinet members (91 percent) are not endorsing his 2024 candidacy. Wikipedia’s “List of Republicans who oppose the Donald Trump presidential campaign” features 128 individuals, from party leaders to judges to members of Congress to a former president.
Trump’s former attorney general Bill Barr testified before Congress that Trump is “a troubled man” who must face justice. Former Vice President Mike Pence announced on Fox News that his ex-boss has strayed too far from conservative philosophy. Both are not endorsing Trump’s campaign.
A GOP group calling itself Republican Voters Against Trump launched a $50 million ad campaign featuring first-person video testimonials of more than 100 former Trump voters.
The Guardian notes Fox News on-air personalities’ relationship with Trump started eroding with the Jan. 6, 2021, coup attempt and ensuing $1.6 billion lawsuit by Dominion against the network.
On Jan. 25, the Wall Street Journal (like Fox, controlled by the Murdoch family) criticized Trump for meddling in congressional talks on border security and his blatant threat to permanently bar Republicans from the MAGA camp who supported Nikki Haley’s campaign. The Journal called his actions “a high act of self-sabotage” and “it would be a good reason to vote for someone else.”
The WSJ-Trump romance has been eroding for years as witnessed by the editorial board’s leading op-ed on Nov. 9, 2022, titled “Trump Is the Republican Party’s Biggest Loser.”
Biden and Trump
Turnover of employees is a standard measure of business stability (or chaos). Trump had a 35 percent first-year turnover of senior executives while Biden only had an 8 percent first-year turnover. By Trump’s last day of office, 60 of the 65 senior executives (92 percent) had left his administration. Currently, Biden’s turnover rate is 71 percent.
Between now and Nov. 5, continue to do your independent homework, versus being a lemming and getting hoodwinked by the political parties’ disinformation, misinformation and propaganda.
Let’s admit it. We have clowns to the left, jokers to the right and here I am – like 43 percent of voters – stuck in the middle with you.
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.