Obama's Personal Victory

Vladimir Pastukhov
6.11.2026, 10:57
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Over the next two months, we need to figure out what's most important.

The Great American Democratic Counterrevolution.

I’ll try to summarize my impressions of the first few days following the U.S. election, which shook the world.

It can be said with a high degree of certainty that the Democrats’ victory was the result of a protest against Trump as a person, but not against his political agenda.

The public reacted negatively to the excesses, extremes, eccentricities, and rudeness that accompanied the implementation of Trump’s political agenda, but not to the substance of that agenda itself or the principles underlying it.

The victorious Democrats do not offer a real alternative to Trump’s political course, promoting the slogan of “normalization”—that is, a return to “the way things were”—as their strategy for victory. But it was precisely “the way things were” that gave rise to Trump’s “new course” at the previous turning point in history.

The Democrats’ victory itself, which seems “revolutionary,” is in essence “counterrevolutionary.” So far, the Democrats’ only “declared” goal is to halt the “Trump revolution” and restore the “status quo” that existed before he came to power.

As of today, the election results look more like a personal victory for Obama over Trump and a victory for the Democratic Party’s disciplined party machine over the Republican Party’s machine—which had been terrorized by Trump—rather than a political victory for the Democratic Party itself.

Accordingly, the main issue in American politics remains not the question of Trump’s personal power, but the question of the fate of the political trend on the crest of which Trump came to power.

The answer we will have to find out over the next two years is either that the shift signaled by Trump was a historical accident (a blip) that history will carefully file away in a few strokes, or that this shift was driven by real tectonic shifts in America’s economic and political landscape—and is therefore historically inevitable.

In the second case, the Democrats’ “historic” victory in the midterm elections will have significance that is literally not so much historic as it is interim, that is, it will lead not to a change in course, but to an intensification of the struggle between the “centers of power” within the Republican Party that are responsible for implementing this course.

We are already seeing the first signs of this struggle. They are evidenced by the political mobilization of “The Family,” “The Movement,” and the party establishment. An outward manifestation of this mobilization could soon be a showdown within the “Trump–Vance–Rubio” triangle.

Despite his overall weakening, Trump retains an advantage: he is the only one who can attempt to change not so much the game as the rules of the game. But to do so, he must start a war—either an imperialist one or a civil war.

Over the next two months, we must figure out the key question: Is Trump ready to radically change the rules of the game? The Democratic counterrevolution leaves him no time to think it over. After January 2027, it will be much harder—or even impossible—for him to do so.

If Trump simply enters a state of permanent impeachment without taking any action beforehand, he will become an intolerable burden on the Republican Party, which will have to acknowledge that what had previously helped it so much now categorically hinders its political survival.

The ultimate alternative looks very strange so far: either Trump orchestrates a coup within the party, or the party uses a coup to oust Trump. Meanwhile, the Democrats retain only the destructive role of triggering these processes, rather than that of shaping an alternative course.

Vladimir Pastukhov, “Telegram”

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