Historian argues landslide needed to address democracy concerns in midterms

Democrats face an open goal without a clear finisher

With less than 100 days until the Nov. 3 midterm elections, historian and Guardian columnist Timothy Garton Ash has argued that only a landslide defeat of President Donald Trump’s party can begin reversing what he described as a deliberate and rapid erosion of U.S. democracy. Drawing a parallel to the spring 2026 election in Hungary, where a widespread popular vote swept away obstacles put in place by the incumbent government, Garton Ash wrote that a similarly decisive electoral result could overwhelm the procedural and legal barriers that the administration has erected.

The Varieties of Democracy Institute at Gothenburg University, in its Democracy Report 2026, assessed that the United States in 2025 saw one of the most rapid declines in liberal democracy on record. “Democracy in the USA,” the report stated, “is now at its worst in 60 years.” The institute’s analysts noted that Trump issued 225 executive orders in 2025 while the Republican-controlled Congress passed 49 laws, most of them on minor legislative matters. The Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025, a policy framework crafted to advance the unitary executive theory of presidential power, is more than halfway to completion, according to the project’s own publicly available tracker.

Garton Ash said Trump is working on what he called “fixing the next election.” He described what he characterized as “outrageous levels of partisan gerrymandering,” which he said Democrats have responded to in kind in some states. He also cited “multiple attempts to deny the vote to groups more likely to vote Democrat” through restrictions on mail-in ballots, requirements for on-the-spot documentary proof of U.S. citizenship, and other legal and procedural measures. He warned that if the election result is close in congressional districts that could determine control of the House, “Trump and the Republicans would pull out every stop to disqualify or exclude Democrat victors.”

Garton Ash argued that Trump himself is doing the most to create conditions for an anti-Trump landslide. He said the combination of Trump’s tariffs and the war in the Middle East has increased the cost of living, most visibly in gasoline prices. He noted that, according to official figures, the war against Iran has cost $37.5 billion, with the administration requesting an additional $67.1 billion. He said popular opposition to the war is approaching 60% in opinion polls, as is the president’s disapproval rating. Garton Ash also pointed to what he called “the blatant corruption of his regime,” citing an estimate that Trump has enriched himself and his family by roughly $2 billion. He highlighted a plan by FIFA President Gianni Infantino, who he described as a Trump crony, to sell stakes in running the World Cup to an investment fund led by Joshua Kushner, the brother-in-law of Trump’s daughter Ivanka.

Garton Ash said the political landscape amounts to “the electoral equivalent of an open goal for the Democrats,” but he questioned where the party’s leadership is. He noted that Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, 75, “hardly resembles a prize striker,” and said opinion polls show Democrats “vie with Trump for unpopularity.” He observed that much of the political energy is with democratic socialists such as New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani, but questioned whether such candidates can win in states like Michigan or Wisconsin.

New York Times columnist Ezra Klein has suggested that the diversity of Democratic candidates across different regions could be a strength, according to Garton Ash. But Garton Ash wrote that “getting the wrong candidate in just a couple of the 35 Senate seats up for grabs this time seems likely to cost the Democrats their already slim chance of flipping the Senate as well.”

Garton Ash argued that “what’s at stake here is not the future of the Democrats; it’s the future of democracy.” He said a normal midterm change in control of the House is the minimum needed to begin checking the erosion of liberal democracy under Trump, partly through Congress’s constitutional powers to control government funding, to investigate, and to impeach. He argued that a landslide would bring a “psychological shift” as Trump begins to look like a “loser.” He predicted that Trump would try to prevent, circumvent, and delegitimize a Democrat-controlled House.

Last summer, Garton Ash wrote a column arguing that Americans had 400 days to save their democracy. He now writes that “it’s now little more than 90.”