Dr. Richard Barton is a Democracy Fellow at Unite America and a professor at Syracuse University’s Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs. He has a PhD in Government from Cornell University, and his research examines how electoral and legislative institutions shape lawmaking in Congress and the American Political Economy.
There is growing mainstream consensus that partisan primaries are one of the main causes of government dysfunction. They disenfranchise voters, promote division, and gridlock legislatures. Recognizing this Primary Problem, Alaska, California, Louisiana and Washington have eliminated partisan primaries. While each state’s system is slightly different, the evidence so far suggests nonpartisan primaries are decreasing polarization and improving governance.
But given how partisan and ideologically extreme most politicians still are, are nonpartisan primaries really enough to save American democracy? While we’re already seeing improvements in the states that have them, the tide won’t fully change until a critical mass of politicians are freed from partisan primaries at the state and national level.
The reality is that even though politicians from four states are already liberated from partisan primaries, their behavior is still affected by the vast majority of lawmakers who aren’t. Recent developments in Washington, D.C. on the debt ceiling and in Nebraska on hot-button social issues help demonstrate this dynamic.
First, consider the debt ceiling debate in Washington. On the surface, it appears that Speaker Kevin McCarthy, along with other Republicans from nonpartisan primary states, were equally as guilty as any for bringing the nation to the brink of default and economic calamity.
If nonpartisan primaries are such a force for moderation and good governance, you’d think Speaker McCarthy and other Republicans from these states would have been less combative in the negotiations.
Again, back to reality. Republicans from nonpartisan primary states still have to govern with colleagues elected through a partisan primary, and Speaker McCarthy is tasked with leading them. Because he needed to appease the far-right Freedom Caucus — all of whom are from states that use partisan primaries — he was less compromising than he might have otherwise been.
Ultimately, Speaker McCarthy and lesser-known Louisiana Republican Rep. Garret Graves marshaled enough GOP support for the deal.
In the final vote, 95 percent of Republicans from the nonpartisan primary states voted for the bill, in contrast to 65 percent from partisan primary states. Despite this clear statistical difference, representatives from nonpartisan primaries acted more ideological and partisan than they might have otherwise, in an effort to maintain solidarity (and win over) more partisan colleagues elected under the traditional primary system.
For the second example, consider the rightward lurch of Nebraska Republicans and the resulting dysfunction in the state legislature over hot button issues. Nebraska instituted nonpartisan primaries in 1934 when it began holding elections for its unicameral state senate without party labels. From 1996-2020, Nebraska was the fourth least polarized state government in the nation. ( Louisiana, the only other state that has eliminated partisan primaries, was the second least polarized during this period.) So up until recently, Nebraska’s unicameral Senate was held up as a model of civil deliberation and good governance.
However, in recent years, the Nebraska Senate has become as partisan as other states. The same measures that show Nebraska was generally less polarized in recent decades also show that Nebraska has nonetheless been the most rapidly polarizing state over the last decade. This rapid polarization crescendoed earlier this year when Democrats filibustered Republican legislation restricting abortion and treatment for trans youth, grinding the government to a halt for several weeks.
Similar to the congressional debt ceiling example, outside forces were at play in Nebraska. While the state legislature has nonpartisan primaries, the gubernatorial primaries are partisan. In 2014, now-Gov. Pete Ricketts won a very competitive Republican primary for governor with just 26.6 percent of the vote. He then defeated his Democratic opponent in an uncompetitive general election. Unsurprisingly, Gov. Ricketts behaved like a politician who had to worry much more about being outflanked on the right in a primary than about losing to a Democrat in November.
When moderate Republicans in the state senate opposed his far-right agenda, Gov. Ricketts — who is a multimillionaire — recruited and funded conservative challengers. Despite the Nebraska Legislature's nonpartisan primary system, the wealth and involvement of the state’s most powerful politician was enough to sweep these conservative insurgents into office. These Rickets-supported Republicans introduced the conservative legislation we saw in 2023, including the abortion ban at six weeks.
On their own, nonpartisan primaries appear to enhance meaningful participation, reduce polarization and improve governance. But in the United States’ complex tapestry of election systems, nonpartisan primaries do not operate in a vacuum. In the debt ceiling and Nebraska cases, conservative Republicans who took office through a partisan primary created incentives for more moderate Republicans to act more partisan and extreme.
This indicates that as more states do away with partisan primaries, the benefits of such reforms should become larger and more evident.
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.