WHY WE PROBABLY CAN'T REPLICATE WHAT JUST HAPPENED IN HUNGARY

Alan Elrod of Liberal Currents understands the assignment for Tryump opponents in 2026 and 2028:

The goal must be to sweep the Republican Party out of power and to do so thoroughly that a new political project can begin to emerge in the aftermath. Failing to understand this is failing to meet the moment on a world historical scale. That’s because dislodging a competitive authoritarian regime takes significant effort, especially in a system as skewed as the United States is by the Electoral College and our chronic underrepresentation in the House.

In Hungary, Péter Magyar's Tisza Party just demonstrated what needs to be done in America. Not only did Tisza defeat Viktor Orbán's Fidesz Party, it won a two-thirds legislative majority that will allow the party to rewrite Hungary's constitution and unwind changes that empowered Orbán.

How do Donald Trump's opponents replicate that? Elrod writes:

This time, the opposition [in Hungary] refused to let factionalism threaten their mission. Rather than let a crowded field enable Orbán to retain power, parties stood down their candidate to maximize the vote behind Magyar and his Tisza party. This matters because Magyar, while a pro-EU and a pro-democracy small-l liberal, is ... center-right....

As speculation about the 2028 election heats up, we’re already being subjected to debates about who various constituencies will and won’t support against a future Trumpist or MAGA candidate. The biggest kerfuffle so far kicked up around Hasan Piker’s declaration that he wouldn’t support Gavin Newsom in a hypothetical matchup against JD Vance. This is the wrong position. It’s politically and morally simple-minded and short-sighted. But it isn’t so hard to imagine that some more conservative-minded folks might raise a similar opposition to a nominee like, say, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. This would also be wrong.

I'm optimistic about the 2026 midterms, but I'm doomy about 2028. This is the main reason. I don't think there'll be a united front in 2028. I'm sure there'll be defections. There might not be enough defections to elect Vance (or whoever the GOP nominee is), but the opposition won't be fully united the way it was in Hungary this year.

In part, that's for an obvious reason: Trump won't be on the ballot in 2028. He's effectively on the ballot this year, which is the main reason Democrats are winning special elections and appear ready to win the midterms (at least in the House).

But Democrats have never managed to persuade more than a small handful of the electorate that the Republican Party is the problem. Mainstream Democrats don't try because they fear alienating swing voters. Progressive Democrats don't try because they think mainstream Democrats are problematic as well, even if, like AOC, they align themselves with the Democratic Party and endorse some Democrats who are more mainstream.

Magyar and Tisza were intensely focused on one clear goal: removing Orbán and Fidesz from power. The country was ready to dump Orbán and his party. In 2028, however, our Orbán won't be on the ballot, and our Fidesz, in all likelihood, won't be seen as the source of the country's problems.

One reason America won't be able to generate the same level of frustration and disgust is that Trump will have been in power for only four years. Orbán had been in power for 16 years. Beyond that, it seems very hard to get Americans to change their minds about the GOP if they've been amenable to it in the recent past. Texas, for instance, hasn't elected a Democrat in a statewide election in this century. At a time when the overwhelming majority of voters believe the country is on the wrong track, you'd imagine -- if you didn't know any better -- that this would give Democrats in Texas the potential for a Tisza-style sweep. But while James Talarico might win the Senate race, it's unimaginable that Democrats can dominate the midterms in Texas. The same is true in states like Florida, Missouri, Iowa, and Ohio, all of which used to be swing states: Democrats might do better than usual this year, but there's no chance that they'll wipe out the GOP.

I keep thinking about this piece by Politico's Alexander Burns:

... Orbán’s ouster represents a new triumph for a particular brand of disruptive politics: one defined by reformist candidates who launch new parties and blow up old ones, winning elections by rendering traditional political structures obsolete. Hungary’s Peter Magyar, the leader of the anti-Orbán Tisza party, is the latest victor in this mold....

It would be difficult but not impossible to do what Magyar did in America:

The American party system is heavily armored against disruption. It would be all but impossible to replicate here what Magyar has done in Hungary — or what France’s Emmanuel Macron and Argentina’s Javier Milei did before him — and turn a fledgling political organization into a personal vehicle and bring it to national power in a flash. We do not have secondary political parties that can surge to prominence in a single campaign, like Giorgia Meloni’s Fratelli d’Italia or Rob Jetten’s D66 in the Netherlands.

Yet as Trump himself has shown, it is possible to devour a major party from the inside — commandeering an old institution with grassroots support, casting aside its entrenched leaders, remaking it in a new image and earning a fresh look from voters who didn’t like the old version. Mark Carney has done something similar in Canada, with a very different political agenda. So has Lee Jae Myung in South Korea.

I think a billionaire like Mark Cuban could mount a viable third-party campaign. Widespread dissatisfaction with both parties might carry him to victory. But it's also quite possible that Fox and other GOP propaganda outfits would succeed in keeping Republican voters loyal to the party, while Democrats and the Cuban party split the anti-Republican vote.

Could someone who isn't an insider take control of the Democratic Party, the way Trump took control of the GOP? Burns writes:

If Democrats want to take the hint, they’ll give a closer look to the leaders frustrating their peers in Washington and defying their home-state political bosses, and less time measuring the applause meter at various special-interest conventions and donor retreats.

I'm sure he's referring to crypto-Republicans like John Fetterman and Marie Gluesenkamp Perez, even though his words could just as easily apply to many progressives. But a Fetterman presidential campaign wouldn't tap into Americans' frustration. To do that, Fetterman would have to say that the whole system sucks. But Fetterman clearly believes that only Democrats suck. He's fine with Republicans.

In 2028, the Democrats will run a mainstream pol. The Republicans will run either Vance or Marco Rubio. And maybe the Democrat will win because the Republican won't distance himself from the current president, the way John McCain refused to distance himself from George W. Bush's widely reviled Iraq War in 2008. But a race like that won't lead to a Tisza-sized blowout. And we could just as easily have a repeat of 1988, when George H.W. Bush overcame Reagan fatigue and his own Vance-ish lack of charisma by viciously portraying his Democratic opponent as a dangerous freak, with the media's eager assistance.