Salit is president of Independent Voting, which works to promote the political clout of unaffiliated voters, and the author of "Independents Rising: Outsider Movements, Third Parties, and the Struggle for a Post-Partisan America."
A look in the rearview mirror can reveal a lot. And sometimes objects are closer than they appear.
The year was 1993. Bill Clinton had been elected president with 43 percent of the popular vote. His predecessor, George H.W. Bush, had been turned out of office after one term. And a Texas billionaire with no history in politics or government, Ross Perot, had mesmerized the country with his independent presidential bid and stood on the debate stage with Clinton and Bush, garnering nearly 20 million votes.
The Democratic Party held the White House and a majority in Congress. But the party was worried. Clinton had taken office without a clear majority and his mandate to govern was thin. Internally, the party was restive and divided, echoes of the progressive Jesse Jackson Rainbow movement still reverberating against the party's turn towards Clintonian centrism. Looking to the future – not merely the next election but the prospect of creating a durable electoral majority – the Democratic Leadership Council commissioned a study of the Perot voter. "These voters hold the key to the future of American politics, and there are widespread misconceptions about them," Al From, the president of the DLC, announced at a press conference on July 7, when the results of the study were released.
From argued that the arrival of the independent voter in the mold of the Perot uprising offered a "rare chance to realign U.S. politics around a new Democratic governing majority." What was the profile of these Americans? Will Marshall, the president of the Progressive Policy Institute (which ran the study), had this answer: "The Perot voters don't want centrism, they want change." Further, Marshall observed, "In their view, breaking the gridlock means standing outside the old, polarized debate, offering ideas that break the intellectual gridlock between left and right, and don't simply take sides in that debate." Any strategy to engage with these voters, he said, "has to speak to the deep alienation that these voters feel towards politics as usual, towards the two parties, and towards the government."
These findings must have been conflicting for the DLC. It was promoting a brand of Democratic Party politics built around an idea of centrism, not rebellion or rejection of the status quo. Nonetheless, at the time the DLC urged that Clinton and the Democrats could make sufficient inroads with these voters to buttress his unstable coalition. That would mean grasping a new reality. Stanley Greenberg, who conducted the survey, saw that new reality in stark terms: "I believe we will find [it is] an enduring phenomenon." Greenberg saw "the depth of the alienation of these voters from both political parties, from the political institutions of this country, from the system as a whole, which leaves them estranged from this process, watchful of the process, wanting change, but also deeply, deeply skeptical." Their independence, he said, "is a fact of political life of which all the parties and leaders of this country are going to have to take into account."
Greenberg estimated that roughly half of Perot's 20 million votes came from independents and that the Perot voter was younger than the overall electorate. "They are out here as independents for a reason. They believe [they were] failed by the political process of the past number of decades, and they're looking for something new," he said.
Greenberg searched for deep insight into the mindset of this independent uprising, the "underlying thematic dimensions." Even he seemed surprised by the results. He described Perot voters as "quite libertarian," including that they were identical to Clinton voters on the question of abortion. Perot voters, he said, were "uncomfortable" with the politics of the Republican coalition and disagreed sharply with the positions of the Christian Coalition. They had "strong support for tolerance." Greenberg asserted that these independents were anti-establishment, populist and harboring an emotional dimension that "ordinary people [are] forgotten in the process." Perot voters were "for radically changing government." Political reform, curbing special interests, and restoring public trust were key. They wanted a government that "would act creatively and efficiently to try to help ordinary people."
The DLC leaders had their work cut out for them. Vice President Al Gore's "Re-Invent Government" project was a dismal response, its 384 recommendations failing to touch the "underlying themes" animating the independent voter. Ultimately, though, the Clinton camp knew that their most important aim was defensive. It was to prevent the independent explosion from being able to "congeal into a permanent third force."
Flash forward to 2021. That third force has not congealed in traditional ways, yet. But independents who were 34 percent of the electorate in 1993 and are 41 percent today are deciding important elections from top to bottom. Isn't it time for the Democrats — and the Republicans — to study this history and adjust their playbooks accordingly?
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.