Ready is the democracy program director of the U.S. Public Interest Research Group, the network of state organizations that use research, grassroots organizing and direct advocacy to advance for social change.
As bizarre as it may seem, last year's presidential election provided us with a bona fide highlight.
No doubt, many Americans would be happy to never hear the phrase "2020 election" ever again. But despite all the chaos and cacophony, that campaign featured an important positive development for the health of our democracy.
While big money has been a powerful part of American politics since the country's founding, the voices of regular people, represented by small-dollar donors, may finally be coming to the fore. Not only is this development important in its own right, but it's also a change that impacts the landscape for presidential campaign finance reform.
In a democracy based on the principle of one person, one vote, all citizens should have the same ability to participate in the political process. But well before anyone can cast a ballot, the people able to write the biggest checks to candidates have too often determined who can even run, and thereby go on to win, elections. As a result, the theory goes, those who don't have big money, or access to it, have no voice and opportunity to meaningfully participate in elections. To address this power imbalance, reformers have long advocated for solutions such as small-donor empowerment systems.
But while progress on reform has been slow, stymied by bad Supreme Court decisions and partisan gridlock, 2020 proved the landscape may be changing. It was a breakthrough campaign season for small-donor power in presidential elections. New technology transformed the way many presidential candidates chose to fundraise. Relying on big money was no longer the only viable way to collect campaign cash. This was clear in the primaries, when many candidates were able to rely on contributions below $200 to quickly raise enough to launch viable campaigns.
But financial supporters didn't just have a say in the primaries. The final fundraising numbers from the election also show that relying on small-dollar donors can be sustainable for a fall campaign. In the presidential race, donations from people giving less than $200 accounted for 43 percent of all the money given directly to Joe Biden and Donald Trump. This is twice as big a share as four years earlier, my organization has calculated. In 2016, just 21 percent of the money collected by Trump and Hillary Clinton was in increments below $200, the standard definition of a "small-dollar" gift.
The upshot: Small-dollar donors now contribute a significant portion of the presidential fundraising pie.
More importantly, the fast rise in this type of funding is not only a matter of percentages. It is also revealed in raw dollars. At $784 million, the amount raised by the major party nominees last year was more than four times as much as in 2016. Put another way, Trump collected more money just from his small-dollar donors last year than he did from all of his donors when he won the presidency.
The bottom line: It's no longer really true to say it's impossible to run a viable presidential campaign by relying on small-dollar donors.
So what does this mean for reformers, like my organization, who have long been working to change campaign finance laws to boost the political power of people who don't have many thousands of dollars at their disposal?
Well, it's back to the drawing board — but in a good way. With this new level of small-donor participation, such solutions as matching funds for presidential candidates don't really make sense any more.
Providing $6 in federal money for every $1 raised in small increments — the ratio for presidential candidates proposed in HR 1, the democracy overhaul bill now before the Senate after passing the House — would have had a perverse effect on the 2020 campaign: It would have given Biden and Trump another $4.7 billion to spend.
In what was already the most expensive presidential contest ever, that would, incredibly, be more than twice as much as what the two of them raised on their own.
Clearly, matching the small-dollar donations to last year's presidential candidates would have been serious overkill. Nevertheless, we should still encourage more participation from people with only relatively modest amounts to contribute.
Even with the rise in such giving, experts estimate only 10 percent of Americans make any donations to candidates. Reinstating a refundable tax credit for small contributions would help get more people involved. Not only could that tax break help propel the trend toward more and more small-dollar giving, but the reform also has the added benefit of support from across the political spectrum.
Of course, none of these reforms would address the huge sums being poured into campaigns by millionaires, corporations, trade associations, unions and all manner of politically active special interests. Nothing short of a constitutional amendment will close the loophole that permits them to "independently"spend as much as they want to help their candidates of choice. And the recent surge in small-donor giving at the presidential level probably will never be realized in many campaigns for the Senate and House.
Still, when it comes to presidential elections, we are closer than ever to an America where the size of a person's wallet does not determine the size of their political voice.
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.