Version imprimableDespite dark threats to dispatch ICE or the army to polling stations, Trump’s attempt to manipulate the elections were in the end limited to several mostly failed attempts to get the Supreme court to limit balloting in ways favorable to Republicans. Trump himself as usual blamed others for his defeat and with extreme tone-deafness even argued that the Republicans would have won a “landslide” had they associated themselves with him more closely during the campaign. But given the scale of the Republican defeat and the fact Trump is now a “lame duck” in his last two years of office, more and more Republicans will be emboldened to distance themselves from and even oppose him.
The defeat of Republican control of congress is undoubtedly a victory in that it will sharply hamper Trump by denying him the congressional rubberstamp that approved and gave legal cover to virtually everything he has done. Trumps’ moves to strengthen the executive at the expense of congress and the courts seemed steady and inevitable at first, then stalled as Trump himself became embroiled in the Iran war and distracted by ridiculous megalomaniac construction projects. But even in a weakened political state, Trump can be expected to side-step congress and has already threatened to use the veto against Democratic legislation.
Trump is politically weakened but he still wields the full power of the US State and could react with more dangerous adventures abroad and attacks against civil liberties and democratic rights at home. He shows no signs of slowing his use of the Department of Justice and the FBI against political opponents from Democrats to anti-ICE and pro-Palestinian activists like those in Minneapolis and Michigan facing serious legal charges for their activism.
The triumph of the material
Most commentators of all political stripes attribute the election’s outcome to high prices for gas and food, and the Iran war for driving them up. Polls indicate that 20% of 2024 Trump voters now say they disapprove of him. But some of the Democratic victories were due to gross political missteps based on Trump’s megalomaniac narcissism. He insisted on corrupt and inexperienced candidates for Senate in two ruby red states-Texas and South Carolina and lost both. While consumer prices and revulsion against Trump’s rampant corruption was the common denominator in Republican defeats/Democratic victories, it was Republicans who opted to spend 200 million dollars on anti-trans advertisements, which fell flat and underscored their lack of proposals to address inflation.
At least forty-four seats in the House of Representatives shifted from Republican to Democrat. The massive Blue Tsunami or Blunami however, was primarily the result of revulsion with Trump and the Republicans, not enthusiasm for the Democrats who offered no meaningful alternative to the damages of the Trump years. At every turn, from the anti-ICE mobilizations last winter to defense of trans people, to US support for Israel and the genocide in Gaza, Democratic leaders have been either the mildest voice or in the case of Gaza joined with Trump and the Republicans in support of Israel.
Some Democratic wins were quite notable. Women were elected governors in Ohio, Tennessee, New Mexico, Texas, and Georgia where Keisha Lance Bottoms became the country’s first Black woman governor. Democrat David Crowley became the first African American governor of Wisconsin. Deb Haaland of New Mexico became the first Native American woman governor. But all of them have political records that anchor them as status quo politicians. As mayor of Atlanta, Bottoms was a driving force behind the construction of Cop City, the mega policing complex in Atlanta. While 500 municipalities across the country have rejected data centers, governor-elect Crowley promised to “negotiate” with them. Acton, Ohio’s governor-elect like score of Democrats including Ohio Senate-elect Sherrod Brown waffled on trans rights.
The election of Abdul El-Sayed first in the Democratic party primary and then to the US senate in Michigan reflects the deep opposition to Democratic party support to Israel. El-Sayed, a physician and public health official, who was born in Michigan to parents who had immigrated from Egypt, will be the first Muslim US senator. Although he has publicly identified himself as a capitalist and not a socialist, he favors a national health system-Medicare for all, has been enthusiastically supported by Bernie Sanders and has consistently opposed US support to Israel and the genocide in Gaza.
The Green Party USA ran over 150 candidates in these elections, struggling as usual against barriers to third party electoral participation to offer anti-capitalist Green alternatives. Green party candidate Pāʻele Kiakona won a seat in the Hawaiʻi House of Representatives, becoming the first Green elected to a US state legislature since 2012. In Wisconsin Pete Karas, Green candidate for secretary of state, won over 1% of the vote which assured Green party ballot access in that state for the next period.
Voter turnout was the second highest since 1914. The overall high turnout suggests that millions used the ballot box to register their deep revulsion at the whole Trump nightmare, while many Republicans and MAGA voters either voted for Democrats or stayed home. This was seen for example, in majority-minority areas districts where Blacks were a majority like in several counties in Georgia where voting was noticeably higher among Blacks than in 2024, while white voting participation was less than in 2024. There was a noticeable shift in Texas and elsewhere among Latinos/as who had previously voted Republican but voted for the Democrats in these elections.
In the absence of finely tuned public opinion polls, whose preparation will take time, only so much can be gleaned from these elections. To what degree for example did the 13% of MAGA voters in South Carolina who voted for Democrats represent a break with MAGA racism, climate change denialism, anti-vaxxing, rather than just frustration with high prices? And of course, only time will tell if these elections signal an enduring electoral shift along the lines of previous shifts in party alliances in the US.
While commentators have written about seismic shifts, the weakening grip of the Republican party over working class and rural voters, and the collapse of MAGA, it remains to be seen if this is a temporary or long-term shift. The structure of US politics with its two parties creates a phenomenon of electoral alternance that does not necessarily correspond to ideological shifts.
Wall Street versus Main Street
The reaction of investors to the elections is quite telling. The day after the elections, the US stock market had one of its best days in recent history. But the day after that, a sharp sellout drove the stock market down by 5% on the stock market index, NASDAQ. This was a reaction to the election of Democrats like Gina Hinojosa who won the Texas gubernatorial election on a platform that included a moratorium on data centers and dozens of referenda that defeated local data center construction around the country. The fear in which investment capital responded to the prospect of a slowing in data center construction and a general re-regulation of the radical deregulation of the Trump presidencies, reflects the deep investment made in AI and puts the Democratic party and its billionaire backers on a collision course with the expectations of de-Trumping the country.
Holding the Democrats Feet to the Fire
Much of the Democratic electorate will now expect Democrats in congress to reverse course on the Trump/Musk/Republican party policies they have enacted. Congressional Democrats will be under pressure to reverse laws regarding trans rights, deregulation, abolishing ICE, forcing release of the Epstein files, and more. They will have the opportunity to challenge Trump’s shifting support from Ukraine to Putin’s Russia.
In December, the Scrooge-like Trump-Republican cuts to SNAP benefits-food assistance to the poor, and Medicaid-the government health insurance program for the poor will take effect-several weeks before the new congress will be sworn in. Reversing those should be a priority for the incoming congressional Democrats.
The question of US support to Israel is will certainly lead to the sharp conflicts. Large percentages of Democrats favor cutting the massive aid that the US provides to Israel and El-Sayed and others made ending that aid a prominent part of their electoral campaigns. This will certainly lead to sharp clashes with the Jeffries-Shumer establishment that is deeply tied to pro-Israel lobbying groups like the AIPAC. But US support to Israel has been far less the result of pro-Israel lobbying than the strategic choice of US corporate and imperialist political strategists of both parties going back until the 1967 war when they determined that Israel was the best bulwark against Arab nationalism and US access to the region’s fossil fuel reserves. As much of US aid to Israel is in the form of arms, which are provided by US arms manufacturers enjoying attractive contracts, proposals to cut or eliminate that aid will be met with stiff opposition.
A Socialist congressional caucus?
Five candidates endorsed by the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) won elections for the US House of Representatives bringing their number to seven congresspeople. All did so in strong Democratic districts suggesting both revulsion with mainstream Democrats and the widening appeal of socialism in the US today.
The election of Socialists to congress reflects the growing appeal of socialism, particularly to younger people, and will widen the scope of political debate in the country to include anti-capitalism and socialism. The socialists in congress can be expected to champion these demands, but they will do so within the confines of the Democratic party of which they are a part and with an extremely unfavorable numerical balance of forces. Their role should be pushing the Democrats to undo the Trump agenda, cut off aid to Israel, abolish ICE, while exposing the Democratic Party as the capitalist and imperialist party it is and offering a socialist alternative. Their effectiveness will largely be a measure of their independence vis a vis the Democratic party establishment and the progressive caucus.
The Democratic establishment will prefer to focus on impeachments and congressional investigations that will distract from undoing the Trump agenda. They will point to the Democrats having less than the sixty senators needed to override Trump’s veto to justify avoiding battles over undoing some of Trump’s policies and to justify compromise with Republicans. Outside of congress, there is a big push in the DSA by the most reformist elements as well as sections of the revolutionary socialist left to draft AOC as a candidate in the Democratic party primaries.
Given the overwhelming Democratic majority in the House, DSA congresspeople can focus their efforts on trying to push the Democrats to undo the Trump damages and go further without being vulnerable to charges that they are playing into the hands of the Republicans. The best way to keep the pressure on the Democrats is the building of robust mass social movements that educate and mobilize on issues like US support for the genocide in Gaza, immigrant defense, and climate change.
Subterranean Stirrings of Resistance
Deeper expressions of mass sentiment lay below the electoral landscape than these elections indicate. Subterranean social sentiments and networks beyond the reach of institutional politics and state structures reflect democratic and proto-anticapitalist sentiments and remarkable organizing. The Minneapolis anti-ICE protest produced impressive organization and networks, themselves overlapping with earlier ones developed during the George Floyd Black Lives Matter protests. The much less visible anti-data center protests are notable for their local origin and control. They have stopped data center construction in over 500 municipalities around the country. The protests are organized and attended by people who have largely been previously uninvolved in political activity, and many have been Republican voters. Their initial motivation may be narrow in the spirit of NIMBY (Not in My Backyard), but there is a latent anti-capitalist dynamic given the indispensable necessity of data centers for the AI expansion that important sectors of capital have wagered will be a solution to their problems of stagnating capital accumulation.
Independent Political Action
The weakening and fracturing of the MAGA movement and the Republican party that has been held willingly hostage to Trump, the failure of the Democratic Party to offer effective opposition and alternatives, signs of openings to socialist ideas that these elections have revealed, create favorable conditions to educate and agitate on the need for a labor party. A mass labor or socialist party would offer an eco-socialist alternative to the whole Trump agenda which has combined ideological reaction, repression, and authoritarian, neo-fascist strivings with extreme versions of the neo-liberal economic and social policies that Republicans and Democrats have been enacting for decades.
The damage done to the planet and its inhabitants by Trump and his acolytes, past, present and future, the failure of the Democratic Party to offer real solutions to problems of working people, and the unprecedented opening to socialist ideas in the US public underscored by the midterm elections creates a prime opportunity to educate and agitate for a working class-based anti-capitalist party that can organize an alternative to the horrors of twenty-first century capitalism and neo-fascism.
The coming period in US politics will be dominated by jockeying for the 2028 elections and the clashes within congress between and amongst the Democratic and Republican parties. The end of the midterm elections should also see the return of the robust social movement and labor organizing activity seen since Trump’s return to the presidency in 2025 but largely paused during the electoral campaign. The return of the mass mobilizations seen in the No Kings? demonstrations will powerfully underscore the anti-Trump, anti-neo-fascist, anti-neo-liberal message delivered in the US midterm elections.
Kay Mann, Milwaukee. November 8, 2026
