Thursday, November 05, 2026
Trump Gets His Orbán Lesson
The president of the world’s greatest democracy admires autocratic leaders. He speaks with great affection about Russia’s Vladimir Putin, China’s Xi Jinping, and even North Korea’s Kim Jong Un. But the model that he and his MAGA acolytes have long apparently hoped to emulate was that of former Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, who ruled for some 20 years by boring into Hungary’s democratic institutions, including the media and the courts, and either gutting or corrupting them.
Trump tried his best, and it has now led him to the same dead end. Last spring, Hungary experienced the highest voter turnout since the country’s 1990 transition to democracy. Voters threw out Orbán and his party, Fidesz, in favor of a former Fidesz member, Peter Magyar, who’d tied Orbán to autocracy, corruption, and decreasing living standards. Orbán, who was widely expected to do whatever he could to subvert the vote, realized he faced a result too big to challenge. The numbers were overwhelming in every corner of Hungary, and Orbán could not remotely make even a laughable case for casting doubt on the result.
Trump and his party experienced a similar fate as they suffered the consequences of their brazen attacks on American democracy, of allowing the stench of corruption to envelop the White House, of starting a foolish and unpopular war, and of promising a better economy and instead delivering inflation and high gas prices. Like Orbán, he had to sit helplessly and watch his party take beatings from the Democratic Party in places where Democrats were supposedly almost extinct.
The president’s reaction to this crushing loss has been remarkably muted. As vote counting began, Trump spent his time excoriating not the Democrats but, for some reason, Fox News. . . . and claimed that Fox’s ratings were down “because they’re spending too much time covering the Trump Deranged Dumocrats.” In fact, Trump said, Fox was ignoring a CNN poll that showed him to be more popular among Republicans than Abraham Lincoln.
As the night wore on and Republican losses piled up, Trump, who often posts barrages of messages, was unusually quiet. Shortly after 10:30 p.m. eastern time, he reacted to the accelerating bad news by donning the suit of armor made of his high-tensile-strength narcissism. “I wasn’t on the Ballot,” he whined, “and if I was, we would have won IN A LANDSLIDE!” . . . The problem is that Trump, over the past weeks, challenged Americans to vote as if he were on the ballot, and millions of people apparently took him up on the offer.
By late evening, Trump’s transformation into Orbán was complete. He said—again without his characteristic combativeness—that he would accept the outcome of the election and that he would be willing to work with Democrats. Whether he means to hold to those commitments is anyone’s guess.
Whether Trump has sincerely accepted the victory of the Democrats and intends to cooperate with them in governing the country is, in a sense, irrelevant: The more important reality is that he faces an electoral result too decisive to challenge, as Orbán did. I was among the many who feared that he might inundate state election authorities with lawsuits or even try to seize ballots, but those possibilities evaporated before midnight. So many votes had been cast, even in red states, that any attempt to undermine the result would look either violently dictatorial or patently ridiculous.
Trump, like Orbán, wanted to seize power using democratic means, and then eviscerate any future challenges to his power by destroying those same practices and institutions. Like Orbán, Trump’s arrogance, contempt for the law and toleration of corruption, and staggering incompetence pushed even former supporters beyond their limits. Unlike Orbán, he does not have to leave office, and he could provoke any number of crises between now and the 2028 elections. But he seems genuinely deflated by the scale of punishment that the American people have inflicted on his party and his chosen candidates.
The Hungarians, many of whom perhaps thought Orbán was destined to be a permanent fixture in their life, relearned the lesson of their Cold War liberation: Mobilization, organization, and voting can bring down an autocracy. Last night, Americans proved that the same methods can forestall one.
Wednesday, November 04, 2026
Virginia Approved A Constitutional Amendments to Protect Same Sex Marriage
My husband and I got married in 2014 in the District of Columbia before same sex marriage became legal in Virginia. Since the reversal of Roe by the extremist majority on the U.S. Supreme Court, many gay Virginians have feared that the Obergefell ruling striking down bans on same sex marriage could suffer a similar fate, throwing thousands of marriages in limbo at best. To address this concern and also to protect abortion rights and restore voting rights, three constitutional amendments were on the ballot. Amendment 2 which repealed the 2006 ban on same sex marriages and added guaranties to protect same sex marriages passed with over 57% of the votes cast. A piece in the Virginia Mercury looks at these constitutional amendments. Here are excerpts:
On Election Day, Virginians approved three amendments to enshrine reproductive, marriage and voting rights for former felons into the state’s constitution, the culmination of a multi-year journey through the state legislature galvanized by lawmakers, advocates and major federal shifts.
Over 61% of voters answered yes to Ballot Question 1 as of 10 p.m. Tuesday, according to unofficial results from the Virginia Department of Elections. It asked if access to contraception, fertility treatment and abortions should be protected.
On Ballot Question 2, which asked if a defunct ban on same-sex marriage should be removed from the constitution, 56% of voters replied affirmatively.
The third ballot question asked whether the voting rights restoration process for formerly incarcerated people should become automatic or remain petition-based. 55% of voters said yes.
The second amendment voters approved will lift a technical ban on gay marriage and affirm “that two adults may marry regardless of sex, gender, or race.” These unions must receive equal protection under the law.
Since 2006, Virginia has technically banned gay marriage.
The prohibition has been rendered moot since the Supreme Court ruled on Obergefell v. Hodges, which has upheld such unions nationally since 2015.
But after federal abortion protections were removed by the Supreme Court, Virginia lawmakers set to work enshrining state-level protections moving forward.
“Tonight’s victory belongs to generations of Virginians who organized, advocated and fought for equality, often without knowing whether they would live to see this day,” said Narissa Rahaman, Executive Director at Equality Virginia.
Voters Repudiate Trump as Democrats Rout Republicans
[The Felon]
President Trumphas been the dominant political figure of this century. He pulled off one of the most unlikely campaign victories in American history, and then staged the greatest political comeback. He has altered the United States’ relationship with the world, rewritten the rules and expectations of the presidency, inflamed the nation’s divisions, and changed how—and how often—Americans think about his office. He is omnipresent, and draws his power from that ubiquity.But tonight, Trump has been forced to face his political mortality. He asked voters to make these midterm elections a referendum on him, to imagine that his name was on the ballot. They listened—and then rejected him. It is a stunning, widespread rebuke. Democrats appear poised to win the House and, if trends hold, could also capture the Senate after Americans registered their strong disapproval of the direction in which the president has taken the country over the past two years. Trump will now likely have to deal with congressional Democrats who could block his agenda and wield the power of the subpoena. He also must face the possibility that the political party he remade in his image may soon start looking beyond him. Donald J. Trump is now officially, thoroughly a lame duck.
But we haven’t heard the last of him. He remains the commander in chief, dominates global affairs, wields the expansive power of executive orders, and remains unequaled at capturing attention.
Yet for all his power, for all his volume, he cannot browbeat the unrelenting calendar: The next national election will be the one to replace him. Trump will before long begin to slip in the headlines, pushed off the front page by the presidential campaign. He’ll face the possibility of being succeeded by a Democratic president who could employ the Department of Justice to plumb the previous four years and look into Trump’s allies, friends, family, and businesses. And he’ll confront arguably his greatest fear: irrelevance. . . . . Tonight’s expected losses will not humble him. But they mark the beginning of the end.
Trump’s midterm campaign ended in the most ridiculous, yet predictable, way possible. For months, the president had been accused of being out of touch, of losing his once-unmatched feel for what animated his supporters. He has mocked affordability concerns while his own fortune has swelled, started a war that Americans did not want, remodeled the White House, and planned various monuments to himself. And then yesterday, he decided that the best way to push back against the accusation that he’d been consumed with vanity projects and corrupt bargains would be to deliver the final speech of the campaign cycle at the site of his most absurd, failed renovation project. . . . Worst of all, the detour to revisit the Reflecting Pool distracted from Trump’s true closing message: that Senator Jon Husted of Ohio has a great body.
Trump was a late entrant on the campaign trail, and had to be talked into holding rallies over the past month or so. But once he was, he insisted that the election be about himself and his successes, and make no acknowledgment of any missteps or empathy for those who are struggling. . . . But these road shows weren’t quite the same as those that became the defining political event of the past decade.
They were smaller than normal, and few were outdoors (in part because of security concerns). One rally in Ohio in the campaign’s final fortnight was held in a small gym, and others featured plenty of empty seats. More striking was where the rallies were held: nearly half in deep-red states where Trump has easily won in the past and has rarely needed to campaign. . . . But the geography also told a story: Trump had to visit Republican strongholds such as South Carolina and Montana because seats in those states were suddenly in play and his faithful had to be summoned. But once there, what did Trump really have to offer?
He forced out multiple incumbent senators for being disloyal and backed some problematic candidates, all of which put more races into play. He gave Republican candidates very little to run on, as voters furiously reacted to an economy that seemed to benefit only the rich (a category that includes the president’s family and Cabinet). Instead, Trump tried to recycle culture-war issues from campaigns past, including fears about transgender surgeries, Muslim terrorists, and even communism.
He seemed out of step not just with the public but, in many cases, with his own party. Despite warnings that AI could wipe out humanity (or at least a lot of jobs), Trump backed the nascent technology and its data centers—even as the public turned on them—because tech companies are propping up the stock market. He supported a controversial attack ad in the Ohio governor’s race that the state’s Republican governor denounced. He sided with Russia in its war with Ukraine. He threatened to once more bomb Iran. And there really was a lot of talk about butts, which will surely confuse future historians.
Trump took to social media to duck blame—and contradict the central message of his campaign, writing, “I wasn’t on the Ballot and if I was, we would have won IN A LANDSLIDE!” Trump is now in a new place, and one he won’t like.
In his first midterm election, in 2018, Democrats gained control of the House, but that victory was offset by GOP wins in the Senate. . . . The Democratic Party’s approval ratings remain low, and although not being a Republican boosted many Democrats in this year’s campaign, that won’t be the case going forward. Jeffries has signaled that he will focus on measures to try to address affordability and health-care challenges. Democrats are going to say “no” a lot, and now that it appears that they will capture the Senate too, they will likely make it difficult for Trump to confirm any of his nominees, including possible Supreme Court justices.
But the Democratic Party’s base is hungry to hold the Trump administration accountable: for DOGE’s destruction of the government, for war, for foreign business deals masquerading as diplomacy, for profiting off the presidency. Accusations of corruption against Trump and his administration have proliferated compared with in his first term. Democrats have promised to issue subpoenas and parade administration officials through the Capitol’s hearing rooms . . .
Trump is leery about some of the possible investigations and does not want to be impeached again. (Democrats might be more inclined to try to oust a Cabinet member anyway.) The probes he likely faces next year could act as a preview of what would happen in 2029 if a Democratic president follows him. Trump enjoys a sort of immunity granted by the Supreme Court, and he has vowed to give preemptive pardons to many people in this administration. Yet advisers say he is unhappy at the prospect of his inner circle facing punishing investigations once he leaves office.
Trump also may start to see the complete fealty of the Republican Party erode. This stunning midterms wipeout suggests that Trump’s instincts and influence seem to be waning, and Republicans may be more willing to defy him. As the next round of presidential contenders begins to emerge, Republicans will begin to sort out what their post-MAGA future will look like—and what role, if any, Trump plays in it.
Tuesday, November 03, 2026
Republicans Resort to Racism As Their Closing Argument
Faced with flagging numbers over an unpopular and unnecessary war in Iran, inflation exacerbated by tariffs, lawless immigration enforcement, and corruption, Republicans have gone back to basics for their closing message: stoking hatred against minority groups.
The Michigan Senate campaign between the Republican Mike Rogers and the Democrat Abdul El-Sayed has been particularly ugly. Rogers has accused El-Sayed—without any evidence—of being “bought off by the Muslim Brotherhood.” At a recent rally, J. D. Vance said El-Sayed harbored “anti-white racial hate,” and President Trump called him a “jihadist” who would need to go through a “metal detector” to enter the Senate. The only time in recent memory that the Senate was subject to political violence, it is worth noting, is when Trump himself incited an attack on it.
Republican attacks elsewhere have also focused on vulnerable minorities. The Iowa Republican Ashley Hinson has accused her Democratic opponent, Josh Turek, of voting “to allow government employees to help their kids change their gender at school and keep it secret from the parents.” Anti-trans ads are a GOP staple in Texas, where Republicans backing the Senate candidate Ken Paxton have tried to turn allegations of corruption and infidelity into a positive by attacking the Democrat James Talarico’s masculinity. Also in Texas, Republican Governor Greg Abbott, who’s in a close race with the Democrat Gina Hinojosa, has accused his Catholic opponent of supporting “Sharia law.” On Halloween, Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins posted a fake costume for a “SNAP fraudster,” complete with handcuffs and piles of “taxpayers cash,” that was little more than a racist stereotype about Black people.
All of this has coincided with Trump’s usual race-baiting about immigration. Pointing to unrest in France, the president posted on his social network that “the immigration of people from an entirely different world, people with hatred in their hearts, has shattered that once great country.” The idea that there was no history of violent protest in France before immigrants got there is—well, let’s say you have to know very little about France to believe that one. Still, the message is pretty clear: If you let people who aren’t white into your country, you will get riots.
Overt bigotry is nothing new for Trump or the Trump-era Republican Party. One reason the GOP is betting the House and Senate on this approach working is that the electorate has not rebuked it often or forcefully enough. Republicans didn’t draw the line when Trump called Somalis “garbage” or when he slandered Haitian immigrants as pet eaters.
Put simply, bigotry remains a large part of American politics because some American voters like it, and many others do not find it disqualifying. If Republicans thought this kind of talk was politically ineffective, they would not engage in it.
MAGA has historically bet on white identity politics to mobilize white voters in large enough numbers to give Republicans an insurmountable advantage in the Senate and Electoral College. To this end, right-wing candidates have tried to make fears of minority groups as salient as possible every election cycle, even if it requires senseless conspiracy theories.
But at this point, Americans should recognize this campaign for the cynical gambit that it is. Trump’s scapegoating has not solved any problems. It has not brought down inflation or the cost of living; it has not raised wages or led to greater job growth. The only winners of the Trump administration are his family members, whose wealth has grown since he took office, and industries that have enjoyed favorable regulatory decisions or lavish tax cuts. For those at the top, bigotry provides a justification for unearned advantages—while for those at the bottom, it can serve as an explanation for life’s disappointments. One thing it can’t do, though, is provide the broad-based prosperity Trump promises.
At the turn of the 19th century, the populist Tom Watson wrote that Black and white laborers were “kept apart that you may be separately fleeced of your earnings. You are made to hate each other because upon that hatred is rested the keystone of the arch of financial despotism that enslaves you both.” Tragically, Watson later abandoned this insight—he became an arch racist and anti-Semite. The bigger tragedy is that more than a century later, a major political party is still trying to make this scam work.
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