The fact that Orban’s party, despite the open support of American President Donald Trump and Vice President J.D. Vance, lost to the opposition Tisa is a setback for the White House, the publication notes. But the strongest message from Budapest goes to the democrats, because Orban's ouster is a new victory for a special type of “disruptive” politics, in which reform candidates create new parties, break up old ones and win elections by making traditional political structures obsolete, says author Alexander Burns.
Tisza leader Peter Madyar is an example of this approach, but there is no comparable figure among Trump’s American opponents, and the Democratic Party itself rejects such a path, the article says. Democrats have embraced the top-down governance model that led to the election of Hillary Clinton in 2016, Joe Biden in 2020 and Kamala Harris in 2024. The Democratic political culture “emphasizes order and avoidance of confrontation,” and this does not fit well with the era of upheaval in the free world, Politico states.
The American party system is strongly protected from such “hacks,” the newspaper believes, and it is almost impossible to repeat in the United States what Madyar did in Hungary. Nevertheless, as Trump himself showed, “you can ‘eat’ a major party from the inside – seize the old structure, relying on mass support, push aside its entrenched leadership, reformat it for yourself and re-interest voters who did not like the previous version,” the media believes.
If Democrats want to learn a lesson, they should take a closer look at politicians who irritate colleagues in Washington and challenge party bosses on the ground, and spend less time measuring applause levels at interest group and donor events, the paper concluded.
