Over the past few months, I’ve been asking others concerned about Donald Trump’s potential interference in the mid-term elections: “What can we do to stop him?” The answer is equivocally, “All we can do is vote.”
Yes! Absolutely!
“But what can we do proactively, now, before Election Day?” I’ve received few ideas aside from contributing money or volunteering at the polls.
Trudy Bayer
But in fact, our ability to influence political decisions is greater than we realize. As ordinary citizens we all have some degree of political capital we must recognize and use wisely, now. Political capital isn’t about money, but rather intangibles — interpersonal dynamics that shape our political decisions.
As a specialist in the rhetoric of social movements and social change, I know the process of political influence and persuasion is highly interpersonal. We are all “influencers” in our own right.
“We vote as sovereign individuals, but our individual political decisions are formed not in isolation.”
We vote as sovereign individuals, but our individual political decisions are formed not in isolation but within our communities and social networks. By not being afraid to communicate our values and the importance of the upcoming election, we do more to influence political action than any political ad.
Digitally, or more powerfully through personal interactions, the impact of energizing our peer networks and using our political capital now can’t be overstated. The final burst of campaign spending under way by the major political parties is small change compared to the massive political capital ordinary citizens can deploy if we are willing now to do the work of talking with our peers about the need to stop Trump and his MAGA movement.
The 2026 political earthquake that brought down Trump’s role model and ally, Hungary’s Viktor Orban, is instructive. Orban — the once guiding light for autocratic leaders worldwide — and Trump have much in common. Trump has copied Orban’s authoritarian approach — governing through fear, loyalty and the control of information and independent media — and copied many of Orban’s policies.
This is particularly evident in the Heritage Foundation’s Orban-inspired Project 2025, which has served as a template for a significant chunk of Trump’s actions. Orban was invested in Trump’s return to power, even sending Hungarian tax dollars to CPAC to support his campaign.
Under Orban, corruption was rampant. Economic hardship grew, while Orban and his cronies profited. Under the pretense of securing cheaper energy, he inched closer to Putin and away from democracy, a move Trump has just copied in his diesel fuel deal with Putin.
But despite Orban’s power and multiple strategies he implemented to rig his reelections — like redrawing electoral maps in his favor — and despite Trump dispatching JD Vance in the eleventh hour to save the Orban campaign, it was not enough to stop a defeat so sweeping it left him powerless.
“U.S. voters can end Trump’s unchecked power by delivering a repeat of the thundering rebuke that brought Viktor Orban to his knees.”
Most instructive is that Orban’s crushing defeat was less about a political ideology and more about the widespread realization that he had jeopardized the economic well-being and democratic freedoms of the nation, and that only ordinary citizens held the collective agency to finally stop him.
On Nov. 3, ordinary U.S. voters can end Trump’s unchecked power by delivering a repeat of the thundering rebuke that brought Viktor Orban to his knees.
If Republicans are in as dire straits as all the current polling suggests, the potential for a Democratic victory is real. But as analysts have warned, if Republicans’ losses fall short of the massive collective rejection that ended Orban’s rule, Trump and his supporters will do everything in their power to challenge or deny the results, as the violent Trump-inspired January 6 assault showed.
More ominously still, Trump has recently promised big “midterm surprises” in which Russ Vought, Project 2025’s principal architect, somehow plays a part. Even if the projected Democratic victory were to materialize, there’s no guarantee it will be enough to disarm Trump. Never in his political career has he conceded defeat, unlike Orban, who accepted his people’s verdict.
We must mobilize our networks immediately to ensure a level of categorical rejection that no leader can withstand. For as Napoleon famously said of public opinion, “It is a mysterious and invisible power, to which everything must yield.”
Donald Trump’s power, like that of any individual, is a fluid, transient thing. He has it only as long as we give it to him. We must use the political capital at our disposal to end his unchecked presidency and regain control of our nation on Nov. 3, 2026.
Trudy Bayer writes primarily about cultural diversity, gender equity and political rhetoric. She holds graduate degrees in philosophy from the University of Louvain, Belgium, and a Ph.D. in communication from the University of Pittsburgh. She was the founding director of the University of Pittsburgh’s Oral Communication Lab. Learn more at trudybayer.com