The “Democracy From the Danube to the James” Edition

I’ve been hustling on a lot of things that have gotten in the way of my writing, and as I got some time, I realized I didn’t have much to say about our war with Iran that you can’t read elsewhere, because it’s really pretty obvious. My quick take: this is what a war looks like when you’re stupid and bad at everything. We’ve become (or maybe, in fact, we’ve been this entire century) Wilhelmine Germany: an operationally and tactically brilliant military that cannot compensate for total strategic failure by political leadership.

Before I sound too admiring of German militarism there, let me flag that Germany’s generals and admirals were part of Germany’s political leadership, and thus bear much of that responsibility in a way our own do not – not that ours don’t make mistakes of their own.

What I really want to focus on, and want you to cheer and feel better about, is the defeat of Hungary’s prime minister, Viktor Orban, and the apparent collapse of his 16-year authoritarian project in Central Europe – one that didn’t just harm Hungary, but actively aided and abetted Vladimir Putin’s global anti-democracy agenda, and penetrated American politics through its support for far-right Trumpists in the U.S. As I noted all the way back in “FASCINTERN,” our enemies are part of a multinational campaign led from Moscow. We have not unified internationally in the same way.

Although Orban had been behind in the polls through the entire election cycle, his Fidesz Party’s control over state media, gerrymandering, and both the civil service and courts made many people doubt his rival, Peter Magyar and his Tisza Party, ever had a chance.

A lot of people are talking about what this election means for the U.S., and they should be: it’s great! It shows people may be turning on far-right regimes. Orban’s playbook was shaping a lot of what Trumpists are planning for this fall. As their polling numbers tank, Orban’s failure is hurting their morale and boxing them in. I think there are some pieces of good news and bad news from it, and what we particularly can take away from it for our own efforts to save and renew our democracy.

The Good News

Concession: to the surprise of many (including me), Orban conceded defeat that night. Granted, Magyar’s victory was immense – even in parts of Hungary that had been reliable Fidesz territory. The Tisza coalition truly delivered on the Democratic activists’ line, “make the margin too big to rig.”

This is a really positive pattern for us, building off what we saw in 2025, when even the most MAGA Republican candidates conceded quickly and gracefully when their defeats were evident. It’s easy for Trump in Washington to cry “RIGGED!” about a congressional district far from DC, but candidates and voters in a district or a state know what’s what, and they’re also the ones who’ll have to testify under oath in court about any electoral disputes. If Trumpist morale keeps flagging, it’s much more likely more candidates will follow Orban’s example.

Transitions and Accountability: Orban’s concession is even more surprising considering that Magyar is promising to press on accountability for his regime’s crimes and their distortions of Hungarian politics. With a 2/3 majority in parliament, Magyar can undo all of Orban’s constitutional changes. He’s already vowed to close down state media until Orban’s cronies are stripped out of it. Unless there’s some backroom deal no one knows, it seems almost certain Magyar’s efforts will lead to Orban’s indictment for at least some of his innumerable crimes, and certainly indictments for most of his cronies. There’s talk of Orban fleeing to the U.S. for exile. I’m sure there’s a suite at Mar-a-Lago waiting for him, though Trump never gives anything for free.

Magyar’s commitment to structural changes to undo Orban’s work is a refreshing contrast to Joe Biden’s strategy after defeating Trump in 2020, where Biden apparently thought his election made everything hunky-dory again. We absolutely need to watch what Magyar does over the next few years – we will learn a lot from what he does and doesn’t do.

International Implications: one of Magyar’s first moves was to announce that Hungary would cease its support to the American Conservative Political Action Conference, and also the Mathias Corvinus University – two organizations that have been at the forefront of providing an intellectual patina to Orban’s “illiberal democracy,” which really always has been kleptocratic authoritarianism. Hungary under Orban positioned itself as the international thought-leader and financial supporter of the far-right, and if Magyar continues this course he’s going to show how much of the international Right really was astro-turfed through Hungary.

He’s also going to show how much of that money really was Russian. Orban’s defeat is a bigger defeat for Vladimir Putin than any battle in Ukraine could be. Hungary was Putin’s mole in NATO and the European Union; losing it is an incalculable blow to Russia’s international influence.

It’s Just a State: Hungary has about 9.5 million people – a relatively small European country. Even for the U.S., that’s about the size of New Jersey, our 11^th most-populous state.

Orban spent his career railing against the EU, but at the end of the day EU membership was essential to his grip on power. EU membership gave Orban access to EU subsidies; the Schengen visa system meant Orban never needed to create a bloody or oppressive system, because Hungarians who really hated what he was doing in Hungary always could move to some other European country, saving him the trouble of killing or imprisoning them. Expatriate Hungarians even could send money home to their poorer family members, further subsidizing Orban’s regime.

In this sense, Orban is less like Trump or Putin and more like the governor of Alabama or Mississippi – a politician who can rail against the central government of Washington or Brussels while also depending utterly upon it. This is something for us to remember when dealing with Red states in a post-Trump era.

It’s unconscionable that it took 16 years, but the Union finally turned on Orban. The EU already had stripped Hungary of certain subsidies, and there was talk of stripping its voting status in the Union if Orban was reelected. Militarily, the Hungarian armed forces had benefited too much from EU and NATO membership to be expected to keep Orban in power via force. The Hungarian security forces were fully aware of how isolated and vulnerable they’d be in Europe if they made themselves tools of an authoritarian defying an election. It’s pretty obvious from his concession that Orban knew this, too. No act of violence or repression was going to be enough to save him.

The Bad News

Big Tent: Anti-authoritarian Hungarians took 16 years to realize they’d have to form a united front to take Orban down. I hope our own pro-democracy front realizes this, but there are no guarantee.

Peter Magyar is no progressive hero. He’s hard to compare to American politicians because like almost all European leaders he accepts a social democracy far to the left of anything America enjoys, but in Hungarian politics he’s actually center-right, and particularly hardline on immigration.

In American terms, this puts him somewhere around Adam Kinzinger or Liz Cheney – committed big-L Liberals, but no one anti-Trump Americans would rally around. I’m not saying we need someone center-right to beat the GOP in 2028, but I am saying that Hungary’s lesson is to open our tent as broadly as we possibly can. Ideological purity is going to be very dangerous. We need the biggest tent we can make, so start stitching canvas, whittling poles, or hammering stakes.

I’d like to think pro-democracy big-L’ss get this, but there are times I read the Left and center-left discourse and have serious doubts. We can’t afford to get this wrong.

Right now, a traditional Left-Center-Right x-axis understanding of politics and policy is less relevant than an understanding of the stakes of the moment for democracy and our Constitution. In that sense, while liberal-DSA-progressive leaders like Sanders, AOC, or Raskin grasp the moment, leaders with the same policy views like Jeffries, Beshear, or Schumer show they aren’t up to the moment. A Kinzinger or Cheney would be preferable to them.

Desperation: I don’t know why Orban gave in so meekly, but I’m certain Trump and his wretched hive of scum and villainy won’t. The people up for election in ‘26 aren’t in the inner circle, and they may be able to concede and walk away, but the core around Trump are felons in America and abroad and facing prison or exile. I can’t imagine them conceding ‘28 in the way Orban has, no matter how an election goes.

We’re Not “Just a State:” Orban and his forces ultimately were constrained by being EU and NATO members, which placed limits on just how far Orban could go without his own security forces turning on hm. Trump won’t have that problem. The U.S. is not a small member of any higher political-military entity. If Trump calls upon the military and federal law enforcement to prop him up, there’s no external force to oppose that call. We’ll be on our own – us, and those troops and cops who choose to support democracy over illegal orders.

On the James River

I also need to speak quickly to the referendum to gerrymander Virginia. This is an outstanding success: it follows on California in negating the GOP effort Trump started to gerrymander Texas and other red states to rig the congressional map in his favor.

It’s important to remember that this entire matter started with Trump. Democrats have pushed for years now for a national law against gerrymandering, and a Republican-led Congress and Senate could pass it tomorrow if they wanted to, and Trump could sign it. But of course, they’re not angry that gerrymandering happened – they’re angry it didn’t go their way!

Virginia’s almost certainly will hold up in court; the Supreme Court already ruled in California’s favor on its process, in terms that made clear it wasn’t going to get in the way of other efforts. It’s not inconceivable that Virginia’s state courts might rule against it, but that seems unlikely.

A lot of Republican politicians probably are pissed off, too, at the stupidity of this. It all was foreseeable. As Trump’s popularity craters, these Republican gerrymanders have made their own seats more vulnerable by diluting themselves with more Independent and Democratic votes.

My biggest concern about this lies closer to Election Day, or even right after it. I’d look for Trump to assert that Democrats from California and Virginia shouldn’t be seated in Congress due to their “fraudulent” maps. I easily can see Speaker Mike Johnson going along with such a farce, though on Jan. 3 he isn’t even technically Speaker without a vote. Whether it would survive this Supreme Court is a 50/50 bet. Go ahead and cast it on Polymarket or Kalshi, everyone else seems to be!

I finish this as we’re still processing the attempted attack on the White House Correspondents’ Association dinner Saturday night. It’s tempting to see some kind of “false-flag” or conspiracy in this, but I don’t buy it: it’s pretty hard to believe this collection of idiots is only good at organizing fake assassination attempts! And that Trump’s response was merely to call for the approval of his ballroom and not, say, martial law shows this isn’t exactly the Reichstag Fire.

There are enough dangers these days without making any up. At the same time, don’t fall for the Republican bullshit that the problem is our voices and our protest. Keep doing and saying what you’re doing; do and say more if you can.