I’m usually not big on using foreign elections as a frame of reference for American politics, but there are exceptions to every rule. This is one of them.

At first glance, Hungary and the United States have little in common: Hungary has a history of authoritarian and foreign dominated rule under the Habsburgs and Soviet Communists; America does not. But MAGA’s fervent embrace of Viktor Orban turned this election into a test of democracy at home and abroad. Democracy prevailed in Hungary.

A disclaimer: I am not an expert in Hungarian politics nor do I play one on the internet. I know something about Hungarian history, enough to get in some good trouble with this post. I hereby pledge to skip goulash jokes and any Bela Lugosi references. We all need to make sacrifices in these troubled times.

The Hungarian opposition coalesced into a big tent party, Tisza. It’s led by the fortuitously named Peter Magyar, a former apparatchik of Orban’s Fidesz party. Magyar is not only a common surname, it’s the name of the early Hungarian tribe who made pests of themselves in Buda or some such shit.

Tisza’s campaign slogan Most Vagy Soha translates as Now Or Never. It stressed the urgency of this election. The Vagy Soha is crossed out on the featured image because Tisza triumphed much to Trump’s dismay. The sign reads NOW. How inspiring is that?

Peter Magyar is a center right politician, but much of his support comes from the center left. The election was fought on familiar terrain: the economy and corruption. Authoritarian regimes are invariably corrupt as Americans have learned from the spectacular patrimonialism of Trump 2.0.

Repeat after me: It’s the corruption, stupid.

Before the Tisza landslide, many Americans showed their ignorance of dictatorships by assuming that once an authoritarian regime takes power, they stay in power permanently. This defies logic and history and hopefully will be less seen as we steam towards the mid-terms. The best thing I’ve read about this aspect of the Magyar win comes from Anne Applebaum, Illiberalism Is Not Inevitable.

Despite the differences in population and size, there are lessons for Americans to be learned from the Hungarian election.

Organize, organize, organize: Team Tisza spent two years wiring the country. They organized in rural areas usually dominated by the right. This lesson is even more applicable to 2028 than 2026. The Democrats’ goal to reduce margins in small town America seems achievable after all the swings in recent elections. It will help in this year’s Senate races as well as in 2028.

The lesson for 2026 is that high turnout trumps electoral fuckery from the GOP; pun intended, it always is.

Don’t give in to despair: Too many Americans are convinced that the Insult Comedian will cancel future elections. That’s not how competitive authoritarianism works. MAGA wants to ratfuck and rig elections, not cancel them. A reminder: POTUS does NOT have the power to cancel elections since they’re run by the states.

Cancelling elections is anathema to Americans and antithetical to our history, which includes many elections conducted during war time. We had a presidential election during World War II for fuck’s sake.

I dig this quote from the Hungarian political philosopher Zoltán Miklósi in The New Yorker’s election post-mortem:

The first time I interviewed Miklósi, last year, I asked him whether the U.S. was sleepwalking down the trail that Hungary had blazed a decade earlier, and, if so, whether American exceptionalism might make this harder for us to see. He validated this concern, but he also raised an inverse problem—not an exceptionalism that insists that a descent into authoritarianism is impossible, but a defeatism suggesting that, once authoritarianism takes hold, there’s no way out. “It’s understandable, after so many years of setbacks and humiliations, but it’s one of the biggest dangers, because it deprives you of political agency,” Miklosi told me. “Defeatism breeds defeat.”

You say defeatist, I say bedwetters. Let’s call the whole thing off.

Expand the big tent: In America, the big tent belongs to the Democrats. We need to welcome dissident Republicans, woo independents, and reject purity tests. For example, I don’t care for Gavin Newsom but if he’s the Democratic nominee, he will have my full-throated support. We all have to take one for the team to open a can of whoop ass on MAGA.

In Senate races, it’s important to focus on some of the more winnable states. I, for one, am tired of hearing about Texas when Ohio and North Carolina are more realistic pickups and there’s Jon Ossoff’s seat in Georgia to defend. I know Texas is our white whale but people should care as much about Sherrod Brown and Roy Cooper as James Talarico. I wish Talarico well but Democrats have a 30+ year losing streak in Texas whereas Ohio, North Carolina, and Georgia seem riper for the taking.

I know that I am not alone in being weary of the whole “most important election of our lifetime” mantra. We’ve heard it in some form for every election since 2004. The 2026 election IS THAT IMPORTANT. It’s a chance to reassert congressional power to reign in a rogue executive branch. Congressional Republicans have done nothing to halt the authoritarian tide, so it’s time for them to go.

The last word goes to Elvis Presley: