What the midterm election results mean

The midterm elections can teach us much more than that the Trumpian brand of Republican Party is out of tune with most Americans, or that billionaires’ donations can turn voters off or even that both parties’ support of Israel has been sharply reduced. The vote was more against the Republicans than it was for the Democrats.

The key lesson for Democrats to learn is the danger they face if they revert to the cozy pre-2026 decades of alternating Republican and Democratic presidents and congresses. Those had presided over a changing U.S. capitalism in a changing world.

The post-1945 American empire had enriched very few. They used that wealth to buy U.S. politics. And they used a bought politics to roll back the New Deal won by U.S. workers out of the ruins of the 1930s Great Depression.

Together, the super-rich and their bought politicians took back the jobs, incomes, plans and dreams won in that New Deal. The Republicans did that quickly, while the Democrats slowed it down.

Neither party fought to build on what the New Deal has begun. If the post-2026 Democratic Party reverts to what it was under Clinton, Obama, Biden and Harris, it will invite an electoral shellacking as bad as what just hit Trump’s Republicans.

Trump's missteps

After all, Trump had promised to end the forever wars, to reshore manufacturing back to the U.S., to stop and undo inflation, to address the long-deepening U.S. inequalities of wealth and income (chiefly by mass deportation of the poorest), and to achieve a lost “greatness.” He accomplished none of these goals.

He aggravated many of them. But he always took credit for solving every one of them. Trump even scolded the mass of Americans for not giving him and his closest associates that credit for those non-existent accomplishments.

Meanwhile, only the rich got richer (and the super-rich even richer still) as we were all reminded over and over. That’s why we all remember that famous image when an elated Elon Musk – capitalism’s first trillionaire – wielded a chainsaw symbolizing his cutting of hundreds of thousands of federal jobs (gutting the public services they had provided).

By November 2026, this record proved way too much for millions of voters. Their hope for change had itself changed to anger and disgust at the sheer scale of what Trump had failed to deliver.

Most of the most progressive candidates did very well and that sends an additional message to the Democratic Party. To avoid repeating the Trump disaster, that Party better offer and fight hard for more and far bigger real changes than it traditionally has.

Taxes on the incomes and wealth of the rich and super-rich must finally be raised to what they were in the 1960s. National rent controls and the building of quality public housing are long overdue. Jobs must be guaranteed for those unemployed now and for those subject to unemployment if and when AI enriches its billionaire boosters. Pensions must be guaranteed for all working Americans: both those now on social security and those who arrive in the future.

Changing the burden of taxation, ending the forever wars, and refusing to start new ones can free funds needed to accomplish big changes. And if Trump repeatedly vetoes Democrats’ honest efforts for big changes, ejecting Trump Republicans from the presidency in 2028 becomes the Democratic campaign.

What the Democrats must do

Here is a sample of the types of domestic changes Democrats need to undertake: an explicit commitment to U.S. income redistribution to approximate that of the 1960s and parallel wealth redistribution; national rent control plus pubic housing construction program; development of a cooperative enterprise sector of the U.S. economy to compete with the capitalist sector; a broad jobs program for today’s unemployed and those who become unemployed if and when AI takes their jobs; a moratorium on AI investment until a government plan is adopted to manage its disruption of the economy; a raised national minimum and a reasonably maximum wage established and enforced; and a serious commitment to reverse the rules allowing money to flow into and buy our politics.

Here is a sample of the types of foreign policy changes Democrats need to undertake: propose to meet with Chinese leaders to chart a shared course for peaceful economic development of both sides (instead of military posturing); propose to host tri-lateral meeting of Europe, Russia, and U.S. aimed to agree on a new security architecture for Europe; coordinate ends to wars in Iran, Israel and Ukraine as a global joint priority and responsibility; normalize diplomatic and economic relationships with Cuba, Venezuela and all other nations.

These are dramatic breakthroughs away from what has become a stale, old failed political program of traditional Republicans and Democrats. Such breakthroughs are what the world needs and millions of Americans are more ready to support than ever before.

The question is whether the Democrats can find and nurture effective leadership that dares to think big and act bigger. For these directions are the only ones available to snatch greatness from the jaws of a relentlessly declining American empire.

Nothing offers the American labor movement the chance to regain its position of inspiring and leading mass movements for progressive change – what it did so dramatically and effectively in the 1930s – than stepping up here and now.

Who else in American society right now could gather all the social movements to such an end? The actual government we get does not depend on what the parties do. It depends on what the people make or allow their parties, old and new, to do.