Good News

Pothole Politics and the Magyar Victory

We will survive the cataclysmic madness of the Trump administration, Project 2025, the intense dedication of Russell Vought to wrest spending control away from the Congress, the unending battle the regime is fighting to overturn law and precedent through the courts, the list goes on and on.

A reversal of the trend will not appear all at once like a gift from the goddess. It will be dialectical, with new politics emerging from our reactions to what this regime is doing. It will be perceived as green grass and flowers growing through the cracks in the fascist pavement the regime is pouring daily.

In this political spring, I have seen two such flowers, two political developments that suggest that opposition to fascism is alive and on the rise, here and abroad.

Democratic-led states and localities are one bedrock of the resistance. If they can deliver a powerful alternative to fascism, hope rises.

The first flower germinated in November last year, when Zohran Mamdani was elected Mayor of New York City. It is now budding in the track record of his first 100 days in office.

NYC is a good place to start. I lived there for 20 years, 1964-83, through some of the city’s worst times. A time of strikes, blackouts, financial failures, corruption, and a deteriorating infrastructure. Politics in the city were rough and tumble. I learned as part of a caucus that captured a West Side Democratic Club for Bobby Kennedy.

This city is tough to govern. There are major, local political interests with real clout who resist change and fight hard: the financial industry on Wall Street, powerful unions for teachers and police, local political bosses with their own agendas and ambitions, an aggressive real estate lobby that once scorned Donald Trump.

Coming into office, Mamdani will have to deal with all these obstacles as well as with a media universe that is out to declare prematurely that a mayor elected as a democratic socialist is an ineffective a dreamer.

The going has, indeed, been tough. But his first 100 days suggest that Mamdani knows the challenges, and (not “but”) will promote the agenda on which he was elected, and is willing to take bold, strategic action. Journalist and researcher Chris Armitage looked at his record. Mamdani promised to improve bus speeds and he has, making commutes less taxing for a city that relies on public transit. He promised to expand day care for all and persuaded a more centrist governor, Kathy Hochul, to put $1.2 b. of state funds behind his plan. He promised a city-run, less expensive grocery store in each borough; the first is getting under way in East Harlem.

He revived a government office to protect tenants in a renter-heavy city, an office his predecessor had closed. He oversaw the restitution of lost wages for underpaid workers. He clawed back $1.5 billion in funds from the state to support city operations, costs Albany had passed on to the city (relations between Albany and the city have always been tempestuous).

He set clear limits on ICE enforcement actions in the city. Created an Office of LGBTQ affairs, a favorite of mine.

He has begun to master “pothole politics,” filling 100,000 of them at a rate unprecedented in city history. (If you don’t think potholes are important to voters, come drive through Portland with me, where some holes haven’t been filled in years.)

He hasn’t done everything he promised. Like increase taxes on the wealthy; he needs Hochul’s help with that. Like closing the city’s budgetary deficit: welcome to a problem most big city mayors are struggling with.

The New York Times celebrated his first 100 days by tut-tutting about things that aren’t done yet, like a larger role for the mayor in policy-making for schools and making changes in police operations. Typically, the Times went too far, accusing Mamdani of wanting to “impose his ideology” on the city.

But the Mayor has actually been both unusually realistic and more honest. He knows he cannot turn NYC into a democratic socialist utopia. He knows that the forces he has to work with are powerful and not socialist in any way. So he laid out a view, in a piece that endorsed Hochul for reelection as governor. His view accepts political realities, welcomes honest disagreements and underlines the necessity of working together for the city on a basis of trust.

I find his approach refreshing, including his readiness to engage constituencies that did not endorse him enthusiastically, but who are important to his success, like more conservative Jewish voters, the financial community, black constituencies and the police (retaining the police commissioner from the previous administration was a smart decision).

Effectiveness, engagement, competence, and success in a major city will go a long way to demonstrating that much of America is ready for democratically-elected government that is responsive to the actual problems we face instead of the incompetence and fake news coming from MAGA world in DC – imaginary threats from immigrants, trans men in sports, communists in the Democratic party, and some ghostly weirdness called called “antifa.”

The other new flower rising through the breaks in the fascist pavement was overseas, where Peter Magyar and the Hungarian people overthrew Victor Orban in Hungary. Orban had moved Hungary to the right rhetorically, campaigning on an anti-immigrant agenda. He built an “illiberal” state that held sway over universities and the media, redrew the electoral map, and tried to embed one party authoritarian rule.

Orban’s treatment of Hungary became the model for the American conservative movement. He came frequently to the US, met with, and spoke at meetings of conservative organizations like the Heritage Foundation and the Conservative Political Action Conference. He is close to JD Vance, who came to Hungary to campaign for him, and other new right leaders in the US. As Timonthy Snyder wrote: “Much of what seems American in Trump and Vance came from Hungary, or from Russia via Hungary.”

This international spread of the fascist/right wing movement has grown exponentially, making the recent Hungarian election a litmus test for its political strength across Russia, Europe and North America.

It took immense courage for Magyar and the Hungarian people to mobilize for an election that risked being fixed. The secret sauce was to target the widespread corruption at the heart of the Orban regime, the same kind of corruption the Hungarian people had suffered under for decades as a satellite of Russia. It’s the same wealthy, favor-trading, law-flouting corruption increasingly evident in the Trump regime.

The Magyar government has not had its 100 days yet. It will not be easy to untangle the authoritarian mess Orban left behind. But it is a flower in the cracks, evidence that the tide can be turned.

It will be sometime before we see where and how fast history is moving. The fall midterms in the US will be another piece of critical evidence. The regime is doing everything it can to tilt that playing field, through gerrymandering they started in Texas and deep penetration into trying to control elections rules, themselves.

The pavement is not shattered; not yet. But the flowers are starting to appear.