Blades is co-founder of LivingRoomConversations.org, MomsRising.org and MoveOn.org.
A successful democratic republic must have trustworthy elections. Voting should be accessible to all eligible citizens, with votes counted accurately and reported honestly. No human system is perfect but elections can be very, very good.
Trust in elections is a related but distinct, additional requirement. Citizens must trust that elections are fair and free from partisan interference.
Since 2020 it has been evident that trust in U.S. elections has been dangerously undermined. The attack at the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, was in large part the outcome of some media and leaders claiming the 2020 election was stolen. A significant portion of the citizenry continues to believe those false claims even though charges of election irregularities were dismissed in over 60 lawsuits filed.
The 2024 election is less than a year away. Now is the time when we can and must do everything in our power to ensure that the upcoming election is both trustworthy and trusted. This is our responsibility. How might we do this?
We need to commit to focusing on shared values; fairness; love of family, community and country; and respect for the dignity of all our neighbors. Then we need to be curious, learn about our local election practices and listen to each other to better understand any concerns. We need to work together to be able to assure ourselves and then others that our local electoral practices are trustworthy and run in a way that is free and fair. Relitigating past elections and other differences will not help us achieve this goal. This is a targeted, future-focused effort.
Let’s be clear: We can see this problem coming. We have almost a year to build confidence in our next election. We can do this, and we must. Escalating political violence is not the future we want to choose.
There are thousands of organizations working towards a better future in communities and organizations around the world. In the corner of the world reached by The Fulcrum, readers find coverage of election reforms and bridging work daily. What is missing are millions of Americans who take action in good faith, willing to set aside differences for a brighter future.
So today, join hundreds of thousands of Americans taking the Pledge for Democracy.
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.