Every Election is now Existential

What the Polish presidential election tells the rest of us

When the presidential election polls closed last Sunday night, this is what we saw on our television screens in Warsaw: Exit polls predicting that Rafal Trzaskowski, the mayor of Warsaw, had won with 50.03% of the vote, defeating Karol Nawrocki, the candidate of the authoritarian-populist Law and Justice party, who had 49.7%.

By morning, after all of the votes were counted, the percentages had flipped. Nawrocki had won with 50.89 percent of the vote, to Trzaskowski’s 49.11 percent.

As I wrote in the Atlantic, this was an election not just between two very different men, but between two world views:

A few days before the Polish presidential election on Sunday, a Polish friend of mine received an unexpected message from someone she had not seen for 20 years. The woman had found my friend on Facebook, noticed that she was supporting the candidacy of Rafał Trzaskowski—the mayor of Warsaw, a liberal centrist—and begged her to change her mind. She asked her to vote instead for Karol Nawrocki, a nationalist historian, former boxer, and veteran of street fights that he describes as “noble battles.” She sent my friend a copy of an anonymous appeal that has shown up elsewhere on social media but seems to have been one of many similar warnings spread widely by email. It began like this:

Before you put your ballot in the ballot box, call up your memories. Open your eyes, clear your mind, reach for the truth—not the one on TV, but the one you carry in your heart, the truth acquired from life, from work, from the blood spilled on this land.

Because I am married to the Polish foreign minister, Radek Sikorski, and because he was briefly a presidential candidate in the past, I have read a lot of this kind of thing before (and, of course, hereby make a declaration of interest). Nevertheless, the appeal that my friend received seemed to me a particularly striking, almost paradigmatic invocation of the blood-and-soil nationalism that is now part of Polish politics, American politics, and European politics.

The message listed all of the crimes allegedly committed by a series of Polish center-right and center-left governments, twisting the record and rewriting the history of the past 30 years into a story of trauma and victimization. One statement accused Trzaskowski and his ilk of having “allowed foreigners to rob Poland and humiliate us, forcing young people to emigrate in exchange for bread.” In truth, Poland has been a major beneficiary of both foreign investment and European Union funds, has grown consistently for 30 years, and is now one of the fastest-expanding economies in Europe. The level of social spending has grown too.

The appeal did not go into these details. Instead, it warned against impending treason: “Wake up from your lethargy! Look how Poland, your motherland, is being torn apart by external and internal forces. Don’t let her be abused, don’t let her face be as sad as the soil of a graveyard.”

The language used by Trzaskowski’s campaign and his supporters was very different. On the day after the election, which he lost, the Warsaw mayor wrote that he had wanted to build a “strong, safe, honest, empathetic Poland. A modern Poland in which everyone will be able to fulfill their goals and aspirations.” It was an optimistic message—but also a message that, at least among a large part of the population, could not compete with blood, graveyards, humiliation, and treason..

To be clear, the election of Nawrocki does not change Polish foreign policy. In Poland’s somewhat peculiar system, the Polish prime minister, not the president, will continue to control domestic policy too. But the president can veto legislation and pardon criminals, which means that the current center-right/center-left coalition will find it very difficult to undo completely the damage done by the previous government, led by Nawrocki’s Law and Justice Party, which politicized the court system and created a string of taxpayer-funded foundations designed to support the party and enrich some of its members. For anyone who has been working on rebuilding Polish democracy, this result is devastating. The anger and recriminations in Poland this week are reminiscent of the mood in the US after the 2024 election.

But there are some larger, broader lessons too.

The language of blood and soil, which has once again become central to public debate in many democracies, is very powerful. It helps many people explain a complex world. It cannot easily be defeated or dismissed in one electoral cycle. The triumphant election of a centrist coalition in 2023 did not remove it from Polish politics, just as the election of Joe Biden in 2020 did not weaken its power in the U.S.

At the same time, the election of Nawrocki also does not mean, as so many will now be tempted to write, that nationalism in Poland or Europe is “on the rise.” In fact, this knife-edge election result in Poland is almost exactly the same as the knife-edge result in the country’s presidential election five years ago.

Had Trzaskowski won an additional 0.9 percent of the votes, that would not have spelled final defeat for authoritarian populism. Other narrow victories in other places don’t either. When a centrist candidate defeated an authoritarian populist in Romania a few weeks ago, some were trumpeting that as the possible start of a trend. But the same challenge will emerge in Romania during the next election too, and will once again be the defining argument of the campaign.

And that is how all elections will look, for a long time to come. Although many hoped otherwise, we do not seem to be returning to a world in which the center left and the center right compete over tax rates or budgets. Economic and policy arguments just don’t matter as much to people right now as these deeper cultural divides. That’s why all elections are now existential: Small numbers of voters swinging one way or the next will decide the nature of the state, the future of democracy, the independence of the courts.

Every time we go to the polls, politicians will say that every election matters and every vote counts. They will be right.

Read the whole thing (gift link)

The Kleptocracy Tracker

Continuing to monitor conflicts of interest, ostentatious emoluments, outright corruption and policy changes that will facilitate outright corruption. (Read my original article, Kleptocracy Inc)

May 23

• Attendees of Trump’s memecoin dinner sweepstakes admitted their investments are part of their attempt to influence the president.

May 25

• Trump and his family have monetized the presidency to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars without significant public outcry and institutional pushback after his early purge of federal ethics watchdogs.

May 26

• Trump pardoned a former Virginia sheriff, Scott Jenkins, who was convicted of bribery for selling deputy badges for cash.

May 27

• Trump pardoned reality TV couple Todd and Julie Chrisley, who were convicted in 2022 of defrauding banks of over $30 million and evading federal taxes, after their daughter—an RNC speaker and Trump supporter—lobbied for their clemency.

• Trump pushed a conspiracy theory about US gold missing from Fort Knox, which his allies used to promote gold investments.

• Trump Media planned to raise $2.5 billion in equity and debt to build a massive bitcoin reserve, as the president continued to cash in on cryptocurrency while in control of the industry's regulatory landscape.

May 28

• The Trump administration rescinded Biden-era guidance warning employers to exercise caution before adding cryptocurrency and other digital assets to employee 401(k) plans.

• Trump has continued his first term tradition of pardoning political loyalists early in his second term—now also extending clemency to rich individuals who can exchange pardons for personal or political gifts.

• Paramount has offered Trump $15 million to settle the president’s lawsuit over a 60 Minutes pre-election interview with Kamala Harris, as it seeks DOJ approval for a merger with Skydance.

• Trump pardoned yet another political ally, former Republican Representative Michael Grimm, for his 2014 tax fraud conviction.

• Trump's crypto dinner guest list included foreign nationals, right-wing influencers, antisemites, and crypto moguls—including several facing SEC lawsuits.

• Trump's pardon attorney Ed Martin made the intent of the president's commutations clear in a post on X: "No MAGA left behind."

May 29

• The SEC dismissed its lawsuit against Binance after the crypto exchange platform accepted $2 billion worth of Trump's USD1 stablecoin in a transaction with state-backed Emirati investment firm MGX.

• Trump nominated 30-year-old political loyalist Paul Ingrassia to lead the Office of Special Counsel, which examines public corruption.

• Trump rejected Paramount's $15 million settlement offer over his 60 Minutes lawsuit, demanding $25 million and a public apology instead.

May 31

• Trump-allied lobbying and consulting firms have received offers as high as $5 million for assistance in soliciting a pardon from the president.

June 2

• The Trump Organization and its partners have announced 12 international projects since the start of the president's second term, including government-backed deals in Serbia, India, Qatar, and the UAE.

June 3

• Major donors to Trump's inaugural fund, like Pilgrim’s Pride and Ripple Labs, have already received benefits from the government—Ripple settled a $2 billion SEC case for just $50 million and the parent company of Pilgrim's Pride won USDA approvals.

• A division of the New York Stock Exchange has filed to list Trump's Truth Social Bitcoin ETF, a fund launched by Trump Media and Crypto.com that is designed to track the price of bitcoin.

• Mass firings at the FBI and DOJ, the gutting of DOJ's anti-corruption efforts, and pardoning nearly every GOP lawmaker convicted of a felony in the past 15 years have stalled the enforcement of corruption, bribery, and white-collar fraud laws.

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To-Read/Watch List: Ukrainian Drones Edition

The world is still absorbing and assessing the consequences of the jaw-dropping Ukrainian drone attack on at least a dozen Russian military aircraft last week, in airfields far from Ukraine. Reuters has published a thorough explanation of the operation, with diagrams, photographs and video:

According to Ukrainian authorities, the operation involved 117 drones that were smuggled into Russia: they were concealed beneath the retractable roofs of wooden sheds, transported to locations close to military bases and piloted remotely to hit strategic, nuclear-capable bombers. In some cases, artificial intelligence was used to guide the drones to their target.

The video clips are incredible, especially when you remember that these drones cost a few hundred dollars, and they are damaging or destroying planes worth tens of millions:

• This was not the first time the Ukrainians have surprised observers with technological advances that no one saw coming. Last year, I visited an underground factory in Ukraine and wrote about Ukrainian drone technology myself. In 2023, I saw an earlier version of one of these factories and got to steer an actual sea drone myself. It felt, I wrote, remarkably like playing a video game.

• Before the attack, the Ukrainian journalist Nataliya Gumenyuk published an article in the Atlantic on the Ukrainian drone industry, explaining how drones have changed the war. For one, they have rendered some older weapons obsolete. Because the entire frontline is now visible to both Ukrainians and Russians, tanks and armored vehicles have lost their utility. Ukraine can also supply itself with drones and redesign them as needed, along with the software and systems needed to used them. Nataliya embedded with three different frontline brigades, and explains how the drones have transformed the dynamics of this war, and perhaps the dynamics of all wars in the future. Read more here (gift link).

• David Patrikarakos devoted an episode of his podcast, Apocalypse Now?, to drone technology, and to the “new world of warfare where a $100 drone can sometimes make a $70m fighter jet look obsolete.” His guests are the former Ukrainian Minister of Defence, Andriy Zagorodnyuk, who I have met many times, and Tim Ripley, journalist, and Editor at Defence Eye. Here is an Apple podcast link, but you can also find David’s podcast on Spotify

• Dmytro Kuleba, Ukraine’s foreign minister from 2020 to 2024, also has a new article in Foreign Affairs, arguing that Trump’s efforts to end the war will fail because they are based on a flawed understanding of Putin’s motives. The Russian president does not seek limited territorial gains, and will not swap land for peace: He has much bigger goals, including the resurrection of the Russian Empire and the destruction of American influence in Europe. Until Western diplomats and policymakers accept this reality, lackluster “negotiations” like those held in Turkey earlier this week will fail to achieve anything. Ukrainians will continue to fight and die for their freedom. Read more here (gift link).

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  A Walk in the Park

I am just back from Italy, where I spoke to the Future Proof Society, who are trying to broaden the sclerotic Italian public debate, involve younger people and bring in some different voices. (I also appeared on an Italian television talk show, Otto e mezzo, if your Italian is good enough to listen). I had an hour in Rome free on Thursday morning, which isn’t much. Fortunately I was staying near the Villa Borghese gardens.

It’s Rome’s loveliest park, a reminder of what can be done with a bit of shared urban space. I was particularly struck by this neoclassical temple to Aesculapius, the Roman (and previously Greek) god of medicine, built in the 18th century, next to a satisfyingly green pond. It’s not a famous or important landmark in Rome. Anywhere else it probably would be. Please enjoy the pictures…