Frazier, a student at the University of California, Berkeley School of Law, runs The Oregon Way, a nonpartisan blog.
Our social contract is broken. Under the contract's terms, "consent at the ballot box confers both democratic credentials and democratic legitimacy," as described by Hélène Landemore in her book "Open Democracy." The contract breaches are numerous and obvious.
The first breach: democratic credentials. Have you ever stopped to wonder how a member of Congress can claim to represent all 747,000 (more of less) of their constituents? Even in the best-case scenario, in a district that hasn't been gerrymandered and in a place with high voter turnout, the member will have only received direct electoral support from a small fraction of the whole eligible electorate. For Landemore (and the rest of us) that begs the question: "How can the authorization of some, even a large majority, confer the authorization of all?"
The second breach: democratic legitimacy. Under our current electoral framework and contract, there's an assumption that simply by virtue of being a member of the public you've consented to the winner of an election representing your views, speaking on your behalf, wielding your sovereign power. Increasingly, though, that concept of hypothetical consent rings hollow; in the words of Landemore, "hypothetical consent is, simply put, no consent at all."
For democratic legitimacy to exist the representative, per Hanna Pitkin, "must (1) be authorized to act; (2) act in a way that promotes the interests of the represented; and (3) be accountable to the represented." Our current elections clearly don't confer this sort of legitimacy. First, only a small segment participates in "authorizing" the representative to act by participating in elections. Second, our elected officials are frequently forced, predominately by special interests, to act counter to the interests of those they claim to represent. Third, our elections, due to lack of participation and excessive influence of partisan and monied entities, are a poor means of holding officials accountable.
How, then, can and should we rewrite the contract? The answer isn't direct democracy, which is "always at risk of being hijacked by individuals with time, money, and intense preferences," per Landemore. Nor is the answer as simple as taking money out of politics, or some variant of a plea for marginal changes to our current system. At a minimum, we need to adopt reforms capable of establishing democratic credentials and democratic legitimacy.
A transition to proportional representation is the easiest (though admittedly difficult) step to take to realize democratic credentials and legitimacy. If the social contract really has been breached, then this reform has the chance to restore the bonds between we the people and our elected representatives. As outlined by Lee Drutman, proportional representation could work by electing the top three voter-getters in each congressional district.
On democratic credentials, the election of more representatives would provide the election winners with a much sturdier democratic credential to act on the behalf of their (effectively fewer) constituents. On democratic legitimacy, proposal would (1) permit House members more authority to act by virtue of fewer voters feeling as though they had not provided their consent for that representative to act; (2) make it easier for representatives to act in the interest of the specific voters that elected them; (3) increase the ability of voters to hold their officials accountable through more competitive elections and a greater capacity to monitor the fidelity of the official to their interests.
Proportional representation is not a wild step; in fact, a move to proportional representation would bring the United States into alignment with most democracies. Some, such as Drutman, even argue that proportional representation would allow Congress to get back to its Golden Era (roughly 1950-70), in which both the Democrats and Republicans contained conservative and liberal factions — thus effectively creating a four-party system in which cross-partisan compromises were possible.
The people, as sovereigns, should demand more from their social contract. The current terms have woefully fallen short of the aspirations of the people. Decades of underperformance justify the meaningful consideration of a new approach. Proportional representation is the most tenable approach that sufficiently warrants the people entrusting their power to their representatives.
image of U.S. President Donald Trump is displayed on a digital billboard in Times Square in New York on April 8, 2026.
Trump is stuck between two realities. Neither serves the American people
Normally, I worry that events may overtake a column. But not so with the Iran war.
I don’t worry about running afoul of a headline or Truth Social post from the president because what is said about the situation is no longer very relevant to the reality.
On April 8, Nick Catoggio, my Dispatch colleague, dubbed an earlier stoppage with Iran “Schrödinger’s ceasefire.” This was a reference to the famous thought experiment by the physicist Erwin Schrödinger, who was trying to explain the weirdness of “superpositionality” in quantum physics. A cat in a box is both dead and alive at the same time until you open the box. Schrödinger meant to illustrate the absurdity of the idea that particles aren’t any one thing, but a “cloud of probabilities.”
The Trump administration is stuck in a word cloud of probabilities of his own making. The war is over. The war is on. The war isn’t a war. We have a deal, but we don’t have a deal, but we’re about to have a deal. We destroyed Iran’s military. No, we left it intact. We want regime change. No we don’t. We already accomplished it. We “obliterated” Iran’s nuclear program a year ago. We had to go to war in February to prevent nuclear war. The Strait of Hormuz is open, closed, or something in-between. No deal without “unconditional surrender.” Let’s make a deal!
This everything-all-at-once vibe can be disorienting, particularly since most Americans didn’t have a war with Iran on their bingo cards until the shooting had already started. President Trump didn’t prepare the country or consult with Congress beforehand because he thought it would all be a smashing success in a matter of weeks.
The miscalculation that started it all: killing Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and much of Iran’s senior leadership, on the first day of the war. To “the great proud people of Iran, I say tonight that the hour of your freedom is at hand,” Trump announced on Feb. 28. “When we are finished, take over your government. It will be yours to take. This will be probably your only chance for generations.”
I support regime change in Iran and shed no tears for Khamenei or his goons. But when you start a war by killing the regime’s top leaders, it’s not unreasonable for the remaining ones to conclude that you really intend regime change.
Khamenei was a murderous fanatic, but he was a fairly cautious one. He liked to threaten closing the Strait of Hormuz or attacking our regional allies, but he was reluctant to actually do it, fearing it would invite a regime change war. The mullahs and IRGC goons believed, not unreasonably, that if they lost their grip on power, they’d be lynched by the Iranian people they’ve brutalized for decades.
By starting with a regime change war, Trump removed any reason for the regime not to go for broke. When you have nothing to lose — particularly when you are a millenarian religious fanatic — a Persian Alamo strategy makes a lot of sense.
So Iran closed the Strait of Hormuz and attacked its neighbors.
But it turns out this wasn’t the Alamo. In the contest of wills, Trump blinked. The Iranian regime’s tolerance for punishment proved — so far — to be greater than Trump’s and that of our gulf allies. Militarily we could finish the job, but that would require ground troops and much greater economic turmoil. In a conflict Trump launched unilaterally without the prior support of Congress, NATO or the American people, Trump doesn’t have the political capital for that.
But that’s only half the problem. Trump wants the war over, but he doesn’t want to pay — militarily, economically, politically — what that would cost. So he wants to make a deal that ends it. But there is no deal available that wouldn’t come at an equally undesirable cost. Any deal that looks like what President Obama struck with the Iranians would be too embarrassing to bear. But the Iranians are convinced that they can get just such a deal, and they’re willing to drag things out as long as it takes.
The result: Trump’s in a box of his own making. He thinks he can talk his way out by simply asserting a reality that doesn’t exist. When the financial markets get nervous, he announces a breakthrough that is, at best, a possibility. When the Iranians agree to a deal that looks similar to one Obama might negotiate, Trump goes back to his threats.
It can’t go on forever. But I’m sure it’ll last until long after this column is forgotten.
Jonah Goldberg is editor-in-chief of The Dispatch and the host of The Remnant podcast. His Twitter handle is @JonahDispatch.