By Freedom Road Socialist Organization
The midterms were a decisive rejection of the Trump agenda and the far-right campaigning for Congress. The Republicans overplayed their hand and that backfired at the polls.
Had it not been for the failure of U.S. imperialism to get its way with the war on Iran, they might have done better. Militarily, it’s been a defeat for the Trump administration. The Iranian government remains intact, as does its nuclear capability, along with the control over the strait of Hormuz. Here at home, that military defeat contributed to electoral defeat. People are sick of high prices at the pump and the grocery store, and they’re sick of Trump’s outrageous foreign policy posturing.
In many states, we saw significant victories for progressive candidates. In Michigan, Abdul El-Sayed won the U.S. Senate, knocking out the Republican incumbent. He ran on the things we say in the anti-war movement—we need money for education, housing, and people’s needs, not war. In Chicago, union-backed progressive candidates won crucial seats on the school board. There were wins and losses—billionaire-backed Biggs took the presidency. Those races were themselves an important step forward: the result of a long struggle for the city’s first fully elected school board.
The “blue wave” brought shock and awe elsewhere, with a slew of flips in states that Trump won in 2024: Texas, Georgia, Ohio, Iowa and Nevada.
In terms of the integrity of the results, we shouldn’t yet dismiss the possibility that Trump & Co. will try not to seat some of the winners, as Trump’s DOJ has already filed lawsuits to block the certification of the Senate race in Alaska. This is the January 6th party, after all, and anti-democratic measures are always on the table.
Critically, there’s already been dirty tricks with racist redistricting to steal 10 free seats for Republicans, and gerrymandering, part of a coordinated effort to attack Black political power by gutting the Voting Rights Act with Louisiana v. Callais. This was a major flashpoint in Black Belt Southern states like Louisiana and Alabama. And in Texas and Missouri, Republican officials jammed through new maps and even launched political probes to attack organizers who oppose these racist gerrymanders.
An important reason why the racist redistricting did not have more of an impact was that Trump’s policies of mass deportations and ICE terror alienated many voters in the Chicano and Latino communities.
That maneuvering was designed to maintain Republican control, but neither that, nor the massive outspending of the typical ‘cash register democracy’ (more money in, more wins out) could hold back the broad backlash against the Trump agenda.
Some things change, but some things will stay the same. There’s going to be more ICE terror and attacks on immigrants. There’s going to be more establishment support for the genocidal regime of Israel. There’s going to be continued and sharpening economic decline, where both parties of the monopoly capitalist class go in for austerity.
In the coming period, we can expect that Trump is going to make good on his promises to block any progressive measures the winners try to push through, and that he will increasingly move to rule through executive orders. We can be certain that this will provoke new rounds of struggle, and we will meet people in the streets to fight on every front we can.
