Dem
47
GOP
53
And now for some foreign news with U.S. implications. Viktor Orbán, the strongman who ruled Hungary with an iron fist for 16 years, lost a record-turnout election yesterday (78% turnout) and has conceded defeat. Donald Trump sees him as a role model for how to be an authoritarian and now the voters sent him home, despite Trump sending J.D. Vance over there to help. Between Vance not helping Orbán and not being able to make a deal with Iran, he's taken a definite step back when it comes to the 2028 GOP primaries. All his opponents will call him a weak, hapless loser. This is why we keep reminding you not to take the media's assumption that Vance is a shoo-in for the Republican nomination in 2028 too seriously. Sh*t happens.
While most Americans don't follow Hungarian politics real closely, this one was the lead story in the NYT, WaPo, WSJ, Politico, and many other news outlets last night.
The winner in Hungary was Péter Magyar (45), a center-right socially conservative member of the European Parliament, but definitely a small-d democrat and not an authoritarian or a fascist. Magyar's party will probably get about 138 seats in the 199 seat parliament (69%). That margin is significant, if it holds, because it takes a two-thirds majority to amend the Hungarian Constitution and undo much of the damage Orbán did to democracy in Hungary.
Magyar didn't campaign heavily on Orbán's being a near-dictator or a threat to democracy, even though the democracy there is much more eroded than in the U.S. He campaigned on the price of goulash, health care, education, and the widespread old-fashioned garden-variety corruption in the old regime. It worked. Maybe there is a lesson here. Magyar's base was young people tired of the old ways and demanding change. Unlike Trump in 2020, Orbán called his opponent and graciously congratulated him on his victory.
In addition to this being a black eye for Trump, it has a number of concrete consequences. The E.U. wants to "loan" Ukraine €90 billion ($105 billion) but Orbán blocked it. Now the loan will go through quickly. Vladimir Putin will not be a happy camper about this. In the somewhat longer term, greater cooperation among E.U. countries—especially military cooperation—was something Orbán blocked. Now that will go forward. A possible consequence is that the E.U. will eventually become not only an economic power, but also a military one. At the very least, there will be a powerful European weapons industry, which will make Europe far less dependent on the U.S. for defense. All in all, this election is bad news for Trump and for Trumpism. It was not a good weekend for Donald Trump. (V)