November 5, 2026 · Elan Axelbank, Socialist Alternative (ISA in the United States)
The wave became a tsunami: the Republicans, with Trump at their head, were absolutely trounced in the midterm elections. Tens of millions of people in the US, and literally billions around the world, will feel immense relief at the results, combined with confidence that Trump’s reactionary agenda can be pushed back.
From Medicaid cuts to ICE terror to anti-trans attacks, from blatant racism to mass firing of federal workers to the data center deluge and more, Trump has run roughshod over working-class people’s lives over the last 22 months. But above all, it was the spiraling cost-of-living crisis—the skyrocking gas prices and the resurgence of inflation—turbocharged by his disastrous war with Iran, which sealed the deal for this historic defeat.
Many of Trump’s attacks have backfired, including his racist gutting of the Voting Rights Act which clearly galvanized Black voters in the South, as well as anti-abortion laws. Support for Republicans collapsed among Latino voters as the wave of terror against immigrants continued, and many young men clearly deserted the party. It’s the worst midterm performance by a president’s party since 1974 after Nixon’s Watergate scandal.
Meanwhile the victories for democratic socialist and progressive candidates in races across the country show that millions support strong left-wing policies. The regime’s back is against the wall and it’s time to finish the job.
No Faith In The Democrats: Mass Struggle To Finish The Job
The midterm results on their own will not be enough to stop Trump’s reactionary attacks, but they show beyond any shadow of a doubt that his agenda as a whole can be roundly defeated. Big majorities for the Democrats in Congress mean that they will be under pressure to deliver, especially on the cost of living crisis, which was the number one issue in this election. If this historic electoral mobilization is transformed into an even more historic upsurge in mass struggle in the streets and workplaces, this could even mean impeachment and removal.
But we must be absolutely clear: despite their endless promises, the Democratic Party will not truly fight in the interests of working-class, poor, and oppressed people. They will not lead the type of movement that is necessary and, as equally ardent defenders of capitalism as the Republicans, they will never remove the conditions which gave rise to Trumpism in the first place.
Now is the time to step up the fight to take down Trump and deal a decisive blow to the far right. We need protests, occupations, and strikes on a mass scale to reverse Trump’s attacks of the last two years and go on the offensive to win the things working-class people need—free universal healthcare, living wages, abolishing ICE, an end to imperialist war, and more. Socialist Alternative is ready to do everything we can toward this end.
Dramatic Shifts
It’s been 16 years since either party won even one Senate race in a state that voted for the other party by double digits in the presidential election prior. Last night, the Democrats won five. California and Texas elected their first ever Latino/a governors, especially significant in Texas, which has been ruled by deeply anti-immigrant Republicans for decades. Chris Pappas from New Hampshire will be the first ever openly gay US senator and Keisha Lance Bottoms in Georgia will be the first ever Black woman governor. Kansas now has its first Democratic senator since 1932. The list of firsts goes on.
From James Talarico leading a Democratic sweep in Texas with a 21% swing of Latino voters toward the Democrats from 2024, to Angie Nixon, a DSA-backed progressive Black woman nearly winning in “deep red” Florida, the gravity of the results are hard to overstate. Abdul El-Sayed’s victory in Michigan is another sign of the times, having overcome record spending from AIPAC, rampant Islamophobia including from his own party in the primaries, his Democratic primary opponent endorsing the Republican two days before the election, and more.
While the economy is not technically in a recession, for tens of millions of ordinary people it may as well be. Trump’s repeated dismissive attitude toward issues of affordability, after such a focus on it during his 2024 campaign, was the single biggest driver of previous Republican voters going blue. This puts the Democratic establishment in a difficult position between their angry, expectant voters and their billionaire backers. It’s also why a socialist program and fighting movement are so necessary.
Another major story from the results is what some have referred to as the “Blacklash”—the surge in Black turnout across the South in response to Trump 2.0’s war on Black America, in particular the gutting of the Voting Rights Act. This was a key part of the Democrats’ Senate victory in South Carolina and in making Mississippi’s razor-thin result come down to the final votes (we may not know the result until next week). Black men under 45 swung 25% toward the Democrats from the 2024 presidential election. Meanwhile, four months after the death of Mississippi teenager Nolan Wells, his family still has no answers and a movement for justice in this case is growing. The picture as a whole is one of the rebuilding of confidence to fight back against systemic racism, six years after the defeat of Black Lives Matter led to a combination of demoralization and a rightward shift among sections of Black people.
Unfortunately, but unsurprisingly, the widespread rebuke of Trump did not automatically translate into victories for all progressive causes in statewide ballot referenda, including in very “blue” states. For instance, four ballot initiatives calling for trans sports bans either passed or look likely to pass in Arizona, Colorado, Nebraska, and Washington. A Colorado ban on gender-affirming care is also trailing but with more votes left to count. In California, the widely followed Proposition 40, which would have instituted a one-time $100 billion total tax on the state’s 200 billionaires, was voted down by over 10 points. These examples give further evidence to the fact that the blue tsunami alone will not be enough to deliver concrete gains for the working class and oppressed people, but that fighting, offensive, independent movements will be necessary.
What Will The Democrats Do Now?
After nearly two years of doing virtually nothing to put up a meaningful opposition to Trump’s agenda, the Democrats will now be tested against the raised expectations of their voters. Hakeem Jeffries’ “First 100 Hours Plan” outlines a series of bills they will pass to try and roll back some of Trump’s worst policies, from reversing Medicaid cuts and reinstating the expired Obamacare subsidies to ending Trump’s tariffs. Notably, however, it stops there.
Even for this, the fact remains that Democrats would need Republican support to overcome the Senate filibuster, and even more to override a Trump veto, an unlikely scenario barring a huge mass movement that pulls in a significant section of Republican voters. This is possible but would require real class struggle leadership by unions and organizations like DSA.
ICE has already been funded to the tune of $100 billion by the current Congress and will not stop its terror against immigrants. Even if the Democrats pass more war powers resolutions through Congress (there have already been two), Trump has shown that he is perfectly willing to ignore them.
Building a working-class upsurge that goes beyond merely reversing Trump’s worst attacks is both possible and necessary. It’s not ruled out that under pressure from a mass movement, the Democrats, whether at the federal level and/or in some state legislatures where they’ve now won decisive victories, can be pushed to go further than they intended and actually pass some progressive legislation. We must clearly demand reallocation of military spending toward public education, high quality public affordable housing, and canceling student debt—not just an end to the current Iran war. We need to demand universal, free healthcare for all—not just reversing Trump’s healthcare cuts.
Democrats, many of whom ran on halting the data center buildout, will be caught between their campaign promises and the needs of capitalism to support the parasitic AI industry propping up the US economy. This pressure will be ramped up even further when the AI bubble bursts, at which point the leadership of both parties will unite to save their system. This will mean corporate bailouts to the tune of tens, if not hundreds, of billions of dollars, while making ordinary people shoulder the burden with layoffs and austerity for the crisis that their system created.
The Democratic Socialists
Seven DSA members will now be in Congress (alongside over 50 others who won races nationwide), and how they use their positions will be the biggest test yet for this trend of left-wing politics today. In the current scenario, where Trump’s back is against the wall but not yet decisively defeated, socialist elected officials should focus all their energy into organizing mass struggle to win the progressive demands they campaigned on and drive Trump out.
This could start with DSA and their electeds organizing mass meetings across the country to discuss plans for mass protests and even strike actions around popular demands such as universal healthcare, no more data centers, and ending the war with Iran. This would necessarily mean a direct clash with the Democratic establishment, who are completely opposed to this kind of strategy, who unfortunately the DSA electeds seem unwilling to take on.
Despite the party’s gains, the Democratic establishment is still deeply unpopular. Too weak to crush the insurgent progressives, their only option will be to try and co-opt them. Unfortunately the willingness of the progressives and democratic socialists to meet the hated establishment more than halfway, for instance El-Sayed welcoming Obama and Harris to campaign with him, is a clear indication of their susceptibility to this. Even Darializa Avila Chevalier from New York City, perhaps the most left-wing of the DSA electeds and a former leader of the Columbia Palestine encampment, has signaled she is likely to vote for Hakeem Jeffries as Speaker of the House. This points in the completely wrong direction and must be firmly opposed within DSA, which urgently needs to develop clear mechanisms for accountability of its elected officials.
Is The Trump Era Over?
Over the coming weeks, pundits will pose the question “Is the Trump era over?” There’s no doubt that in many ways these midterms spell the beginning of the end of Trump’s decade-long political career. A third term, already unlikely, is now ruled out. Trump, who acted like a magnet for the Republican Party in 2024, is becoming toxic for it.
Current House Speaker Mike Johnson has said he won’t seek re-election as House Republican leader, and JD Vance has bluntly blamedTrump’s war for this defeat. More Republican elected officials will likely follow, feeling the need to distance themselves from Trump, after nearly a decade of being the uncontested kingmaker in the party. The succession battle for leadership of the Republican Party is officially on.
But in other ways, to answer this question in the affirmative would leave us completely unprepared for what’s likely to come.
We should remember what happened after the 2018 midterms “blue wave” during Trump’s first term. Though this year’s defeat for him is greater than eight years ago, it illustrates the kind of lashing out that we might see from a wounded Trump. Six and a half weeks after the 2018 midterms, Trump shut down the federal government over the Democrats’ refusal to grant $6 billion in funding for his US-Mexico border wall. At that time the longest ever government shutdown in history, the Democrats were utterly useless in stopping it, and it was only ended by mass sickouts by TSA agents, air traffic controllers, and the threat of a nationwide flight attendants union strike.
More recently, when Trump invaded Minnesota with 4,000 ICE agents earlier this year, it wasn’t the Democrats who drove them out—it was a mass movement of tens of thousands culminating in a 350,000 strong general strike. These lessons need to be front and center for all those who understand that Trump’s agenda has been set back, but not yet decisively defeated. Trump is and will continue to be prone to overreach, which in the context of raised expectations and confidence can unleash further explosive struggle.
Next Step: 2028 Or Mass Struggle?
In both parties, the 2028 presidential nomination contest will essentially start now, beginning with media speculation and turning into candidacy announcements in the coming months. But for the tens of millions of people who just delivered a stunning rebuke to the most reactionary president in the last century, it is absolutely critical that we don’t take our foot off the gas and just “let the Democrats take it from here.”
Again, history is important. From 2009-2011 under Obama, and again from 2021-2023 under Biden, the Democrats did control the presidency, House, and the Senate. Despite promises from Obama for single-payer healthcare and Biden for codifying Roe v. Wade and a $15 minimum wage, absolutely none of that materialized. Until we stop supporting the Democrats simply because they’re “not the Republicans,” this cycle of lesser evilism and gaslighting will continue.
Many will look toward the victories of DSA-backed candidates as proof that the party can be pushed left and made to fight for workers. But the establishment will be doubling down on their efforts to marginalize and co-opt these figures. The fight to win their platforms will come down to the type of movement that is built. Winning these demands will require an uncompromising approach toward the Democratic establishment and corporate interests who will fight tooth and nail to undermine them at every turn.
We need to escalate and link existing movements—against AI data centers, ICE, war, sexism, racism, and for higher wages and better working conditions—into a powerful struggle that can win real gains for working people and kick Trump out for good.
This means building our own organizations and crucially our own working-class political party, which would be fully independent from big business and serve not just as an electoral vehicle but as a rallying point for the fightback. The rock-bottom approval rating for Democrats prior to this election and the record-high support for a new political party show the massive opening that exists for building such an organization. Strong showings by several left independent candidates in this election, with some candidates getting up to 10%, are positive steps to build on.
As we have seen in mass movement-fueled elections from Brazil to Serbia, and mass struggles in the streets from India to France, there is widespread hunger to fight back against monstrous anti-working-class figures and governments. But as the existential conflict between US and Chinese imperialism continues to heat up, a conflict which both major US political parties are completely bought into, ruling classes globally will continue to militarize, discipline and sow divisions in the working class, and repress the left. The “Trump era” was never just about Trump himself. To take down the right wing for good we need united struggle against the entire capitalist system for a socialist world.
