Kresky is counsel for Independent Voting, which works to promote the political clout of unaffiliated voters. An earlier version of this piece first ran in Independent Voter News.
Democrats, if they acted out of more than pique and the need to feed red meat to their base, hoped that their second impeachment would end up preventing Donald Trump from running for president again — by legally disqualifying him from holding future public office. If anything, the Senate's acquittal has kept Trump's base engaged and in sympathy with their leader.
It was certain from the start of this month's proceedings that there would be nowhere close to the 17 Republicans necessary to join all the Democrats for conviction. While the House Democrats' vote to impeach helped their party shape the narrative about the Capitol incursion, it left the party's Senate leaders essentially all dressed up but with nowhere to go — except to conduct a "trial" many viewed as wasting energy and political capital needed to address the pandemic, the economy and all the country's other challenges.
As for Republicans, it is clear they are not done with Trump. Their political viability depends on his base and for now, at least, they cannot hold that base and dump Trump — Mitch McConnell's desires notwithstanding. Moreover, many of the early 2024 presidential aspirants view Trump's base as their own.
There are surely good reasons to prevent a second Trump presidency. And there is an approach that can both impede Trump and improve our democracy.
For it to become more than an abstract argument, however, will require buy-in by elements of both major parties — or sufficient funds to take it directly to the people.
The approach calls for defending and expanding open primaries. Open primaries can take several forms. Most common is the top-two version, where all candidates and voters participate in a first round and the top two vote- getters go on to the November election. Most top-two systems allow candidates to list a party preference or affiliation. California, Washington and Louisiana use this system. In other states, partisan primaries remain, but all voters are allowed to choose which party's primary to vote in. This is used in such nonpartisan registration states as South Carolina, Wisconsin and Virginia.
Trump's immediate strategy appears to be to remain in the Republican Party and seek to support as many winning candidates in the 2022 congressional primaries as possible. Such a strategy is most effective in a closed primary system where only registered party members may vote. And already, pro-Trump Republicans in Missouri, New Hampshire, Virginia and South Carolina are working to close their states' primaries. The success of Trump's strategy will provide a measure of his strength in the GOP and the prospects for those aligned with him.
Reform advocates — particularly those aligned with Independent Voting and Open Primaries — are fighting these efforts. Can they convince anti-Trump Republicans and Democrats to join with them to keep the primaries open? This is not the ideal scenario for partisans on either side. But if they are sincere about stopping the previous president's comeback, they would be hard-pressed — or at least exposed — if they failed to do so.
If "anybody but Trump" is the cause that elected President Biden in 2020, can "anybody but Trump" be so easily rejected ahead of 2022?
Open primaries would force Trump, and other candidates, to demonstrate broad appeal to the overall electorate in order to advance to the general election. It makes it much more difficult for a candidate to do what Trump did in 2016, which was to assemble a solid core of 30 percent or so of his party's voters and ride that through a crowded field to the nomination. Trump used this divide-and-conquer strategy to best 11 other Republicans who survived into the primaries. That allowed him to advance from being the plurality choice of one party to winning the White House with 46 percent of the popular vote.
The best antidote to Trump and Trumpism is more democracy. The impeachment route was anti-democratic and bolstered the partisan status quo. Its advocates sought to block Trump while they maintained top-down partisan control of our electoral process. Does this play into Trump's hands? Is this what is best for our country?
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.