Two years after trouncing Kamala Harris, Donald Trump has himself been dealt a crushing electoral blow. The forecasted “blue wave” turned out to be a “blue tsunami.” Tens of millions voted against Trump and for the only other apparent option—the Democratic Party.

This is the most stunning electoral turnaround since 1976. At the time of writing, the ballots are still being counted. But Democrats appear to have won the popular vote by 12 percentage points in an election with record levels of turnout. Seven out of ten young people who bothered voting cast ballots for Democrats. With 34% approval, Trump’s ratings were lower than any president heading into a midterm election in 80 years.

So far, Democrats have flipped 35 House seats. In the Senate, Democrats flipped at least seven. This gives them full control of Congress with around 250 out of 435 in the House and a minimum of 54 out of 100 in the Senate, with two more still up for grabs.

By all accounts, this election is a crushing rebuke of Trump, MAGA, and Musk—who poured hundreds of millions of dollars to prop up defeated Republican candidates. It is a condemnation of the war in Iran, sky-high energy prices, disastrous tariffs, the skyrocketing cost of living, as well as Zionism.

However, we must be clear: despite the cheers and celebration from the Democrats and their mouthpieces, this election does not represent a seal of approval for the capitalist Democratic Party, who just a year and a half ago hit rock bottom.

Rather, the massive “blue-nami” is a sign that the American working class is frantically searching for class solutions to its class problems.

The results

Ohio, Maine, Michigan, and North Carolina—all states where Trump won by a substantial margin two years ago—flipped to the Democrats. The Democrats even managed to flip the GOP strongholds of South Carolina, Kansas, Iowa, and Texas.

In South Carolina, Annie Andrews defeated incumbent Darline Graham, the sister of the late Lindsey Graham, as well as an obsequious Trump sycophant and neocon warmonger. In Kansas, a highly rural state, some counties flipped as much as 54 points towards the Democrats. Many of these counties are majority Latino, a group that overwhelmingly voted for Trump in 2024.

In Texas, Governor Greg Abbott and Senator Ken Paxton were ousted, signaling the end of a political semi-dynasty. These two arch-reactionary Republicans have dominated Texas politics for well over a decade.

Democrat James Talarico defeated Paxton by a double-digit margin in a state that had not voted for a Democrat statewide in over 30 years. Talarico ran a populist campaign that appealed to a widespread anti-elite sentiment. One of his main slogans was, “The biggest divide in this country is not left vs. right. It’s top vs. bottom.”

Even Mississippi might elect a Democratic Senator. While votes are still coming in, if Scott Colom wins the race, he would be the first Black US senator elected in Mississippi since 1875, during the period of Radical Reconstruction that preceded Jim Crow segregation.

In Florida, a deeply conservative state with the oldest electorate in the country, Angie Nixon, a DSA member, received 3.9 million votes (48%), losing by only a slim margin.

And in Michigan, Abdul El-Sayed won on a populist and anti-Israel Senate ticket, becoming the first Muslim senator in US history, despite the billions of dollars poured into the race to run racist attacks ads. In desperation, establishment Democrat Haley Stevens, who was snubbed by voters in the party’s primary, endorsed El-Sayed’s Republican opponent two nights before the election.

Democracy for whom?

The only way that hundreds of millions of workers can express dissatisfaction in the electoral arena is to vote for one of the two bourgeois parties that have dominated American politics for over a century and a half. Or, they can abstain from voting altogether.

Even with the record-breaking turnout in raw votes, an estimated 127 million—more than half of all eligible voters—did not cast a ballot at all. On top of that, tens of millions of immigrant residents, people with felony convictions, and residents of America’s colonies are disenfranchised from federal elections altogether.

Because of the lack of a mass, class-independent workers party, 170 million wageworkers, 56 million retirees, and 20 million students—the vast majority of whom are, were, or will be part of America’s working class—don’t have a viable electoral party to call their own.

Until such a party is built, workers’ dissatisfaction will necessarily express itself in a distorted, polarized, and contradictory manner at the ballot box. Workers can only vent their anger by voting for one of two capitalist parties. For millions, this means a vote against the incumbent party, hoping for anything but the status quo.

The day after the elections, The New York Times Editorial Board wrote, “Americans showed that the power to choose their leaders belongs to them.” A majority of American workers would likely find that their position is closer to Lenin’s in 1917 than to the New York Times’ in 2026. As he put it:

The oppressed are allowed once every few years to decide which particular representatives of the oppressing class shall represent and repress them in parliament.

The US is a democracy of, by, and for the billionaires. The eyewatering sums of billionaire super-PAC money in the 2026 midterms make this abundantly clear. Elon Musk alone threw nearly half a billion dollars at the GOP—the largest-ever single donor in election history. In the Texas Senate race alone, Musk spent $212 million to back his buddy Ken Paxton—and lost.

This was the most expensive election cycle in US history. More than $16 billion was thrown in the mix. Over $11 billion was spent in advertisements and other outreach campaigns. Billions in dark money shifted around PACs and super-PACs, all set in motion to allow the ruling class to tip the scales in favor of their candidates.

Although electoral blowback against Trump is highly symptomatic of the simmering class rage, nothing fundamental has changed. One set of billionaire-backed candidates was merely replaced by another—and none of them truly represent the working class.

Why was MAGA attractive to workers?

On Election Day 2024, MAGA’s momentum seemed unstoppable. Trump and the Republicans swept the polls and took control of both houses of Congress and the White House. He believed Americans had handed him a mandate to remake the country in his own gaudy image.

The day after the elections, The New York Times, that foremost mouthpiece of the Democratic Party, struck a morose tone: “America stands on the precipice of an authoritarian style of governance never before seen in its 248-year history.”

While the liberals and reformists cowered at the supposed invincibility of Trumpism, the RCA explained that the US working class was not “moving to the right.” Nor had it fallen into the clutches of an authoritarian dictator. Rather, the vote for Trump was an electoral revolt against the status quo. American workers had had enough of unprecedented inflation, decades of declining living standards, and endless wars. The Democrats had been in power for 12 of the previous 16 years. Millions saw them for what they are: the main party of Wall Street.

As we explained at the time:

The capitalist Democrats failed once again to manage the unmanageable crisis of their system. In the absence of a viable, mass working-class alternative, “the other” capitalist party will be given yet another chance … a majority of those who voted for him likely saw it simply as a vote against the establishment. A vote for Trump was a vote for some kind of change, not necessarily a vote “for” the right.

On the eve of his victory, Trump said, “If I win, you are three days away from the best jobs, the biggest paychecks, and the brightest economic future the world has ever seen.” Unsurprisingly, the workers who voted for him expected results.

But there are far more powerful forces than his particular variant of right populism. As we also explained in 2024:

Trump may be a force of nature, but the nation-state, market economy, private ownership of the means of production, and shifting tectonic plates of world relations are even bigger forces … Trump has overpromised, and given the crisis of the system, he will be forced to underdeliver.

Two years of Trump 2.0

It was all but inevitable that the same “curse of the incumbent” that sealed Biden’s fate would befall Trump. Trump is both a cause and effect. His bull-in-a-china-shop approach to the presidency has intensified and accelerated all the contradictions of a system already in senile decay.

His price-hiking “Liberation Day” tariffs only made inflation worse. His much-touted “golden age” of manufacturing jobs was pie-in-the-sky demagoguery. A month before the midterms, 58% of voters blamed Trump and his tariffs for rising inflation, including 39% of Republicans.

Trump promised, “I’m not going to start wars, I’m going to end wars.” Within a year and a half, he had failed to resolve matters between Ukraine and Russia, bombed seven other countries, and plunged into a disastrous quagmire in Iran. Along with being the biggest strategic defeat in US history, the Iran war has driven the world economy to the edge of the abyss, with fertilizer, gas, and diesel prices skyrocketing.

Trump blamed Biden and Harris for starting a “War on Energy.” But as of November this year, the price of gas averaged $4.26 a gallon, more expensive than it ever was under Biden. The rising costs of fertilizer and diesel hit American farmers particularly hard. It’s no surprise that Trump lost so resoundingly in Iowa and Kansas, two states in America’s agricultural heartland.

In an NBC exit poll on election night, nearly nine out of ten voters said the cost of living was a “crucial or a major factor” in their vote. Likewise, The Hill reports that just 28% of Americans approve of Trump’s handling of the economy. In a postelection interview, a dejected Trump reflected on the possible causes for his loss: “They don’t mind the Iran [sic], but they probably weren’t happy—they weren’t happy with the oil price. So you know, it’s just one of those things.”

But people certainly do “mind the Iran.” NBC’s same exit poll found that 74% of voters consider the war in Iran “a crucial or major factor in their vote,” and 63% think that it was the “wrong decision” to take military action in Iran.

The Iran war has also galvanized the existing anti-Israel mood that surged under Genocide Joe. 39% of Americans think AIPAC and Zionist lobbies have too much influence in American politics. Even 49% of young Republicans said they would support a candidate who advocated reducing or ending military aid to Israel. Throwing a Hail Mary on Election Day, Trump announced that he would stop sending Israel $4 billion in annual aid by next year. This is as credible as his pledge to give every US adult $5,000 checks—but only if the Republicans won the midterms.

Last but not least, Trump’s shock-and-awe ICE raids, which were meant to divert attention from his other failures, backfired. ICE surges led to mass revolts in Los Angeles and Chicago, and a de facto general strike in Minneapolis. Now, a whopping 57% of voters say they disapprove of his immigration policies.

MAGA splitting and Republican desperation

In almost every midterm election, the sitting president’s party loses seats. This time, however, the effect has been magnified by Trump’s blatant corruption and disdain for ordinary Americans. As a result, MAGA is split and weaker than ever. MAGA defectors such as Marjorie Taylor Greene, Tucker Carlson, Joe Kent, and Thomas Massie have been outspoken against the Iran war, the genocide in Gaza, and the cost-of-living crisis. This helped spread disillusionment among many ordinary workers who voted for Trump in 2024.

At a recent rally in Clarksville, TN, Trump sounded desperate:

Republicans, you got to get out. Please get out and vote … I tell you what, if we don’t win the midterms, they’re going to blame me … I’m working my ass off. You better get out there and vote. You think this is easy? You think this is easy over there?

In January, Trump mocked the “affordability crisis.” At recent rallies, he ditched his 2024 anti-system populism for a tone-deaf denialism reminiscent of the last days of the Biden-Harris campaign:

We’re making hundreds and hundreds of billions, trillions, of dollars. But my people said, “Please don’t mention that, sir, because people are paying a little higher” … You’re still paying lower than Biden and Obama and [The Iranians] don’t have nuclear weapons … I could just see the fake headlines. “President Trump is talking about all the money they’re making while people are suffering at the pump.” That’ll be the headline. But I said, “I don’t give a damn! We’re making a frickin’ fortune!”

It’s no surprise that Republican candidates for the House and Senate begged Trump not to campaign in their states. After a decade of zero results, Trump’s “anti-establishment” bona fides have lost their luster. A pollster at the Marist Institute for Public Opinion said about the MAGA base who wanted change, “You’re voting for Trump 2.0 and some of them feel they got Biden 2.0.”

The finger-pointing has already begun. Vice President JD Vance, who hopes to distance himself from Trump ahead of a likely 2028 presidential run, is now blaming the Iran war and the high cost of living.

Democrats benefit from anti-Trump vote

Because there is no mass workers’ party in the US, millions saw voting for the “other” bourgeois party as the only viable way to voice their discontent.

As a result, Trump’s low approval has put some wind in the Democrats’ sails. But no one should forget that in July 2025, Gallup found that only 34% of Americans held a favorable opinion of the Party. Last month, their approval rating bounced back to a meager 43%—though other polling agencies like NBC rate them as low as 29%. It’s no wonder that as of this January, a 45% plurality of Americans identify as “independents.”

The Democrats are on cloud nine with these election results. But if they think this victory gives their party carte blanche, they are sorely mistaken. According to a PBS News/NPR/Marist poll in late October:

Opposition to the president is what holds the Democratic coalition together. More than eight in ten Democrats and 44% of independents say their vote is against Trump. Just 12% of independents say they are casting their vote to support him. (our emphasis)

Both parties and all institutions of US capitalism are deeply unpopular. Trust in the federal government hit an all-time low in 2026. Less than a third of adults trust the executive and the legislative branches of government. Most people don’t trust the courts either.

Like Trump before them, the Democrats are promising “a new era.” But let’s remember that the Democrats are the party of Genocide Joe and the massacre in Gaza. They crushed the student campus occupations in 2024; illegalized the potential railworkers’ strike in 2022; provoked Russia into invading Ukraine; oversaw years of inflation; and controlled the White House and Congress when Roe v. Wade was overturned.

The Democrats, along with the Republicans, are a party of finance capital and strikebreakers. The fact that the Dow Jones had its best postelection result in 44 years, soaring by over 1,500 points, speaks volumes. They will continue with the same anti-worker, warmongering policies when in power, because the system demands it. Just like Trump—and Biden, Obama, Clinton, and the Bushes before him—the Democrats will dutifully carry out the bidding of the ruling class.

Unless he resigns or is removed from office, Trump will remain in the White House for another two years. Although impeachment and a flood of subpoenas for him or his cronies seem all but guaranteed, the Democrats may yet prefer to keep him in office, a convenient punching bag as they cynically set their eyes on 2028.

However, when push comes to shove, workers won’t be satisfied with congressional circus acts. They want tangible improvements in their day-to-day lives: better jobs and wages; cheaper and quality housing, healthcare, education, and groceries; an escape from the health insurance scalpers and student-debt loan sharks; and a genuine end to “forever wars.”

The Democrats will not and cannot meaningfully deliver on these fundamental class demands. As a result, the breadth and depth of the “deep-blue wave” may prove shallow and short-lived. Eventually, workers will seek yet another alternative. This adds urgency to the need for a class-independent option.

DSA and the potential for a class-independent party

A decade ago, Bernie Sanders rallied millions around his call for a “political revolution against the billionaire class.” An entire generation of young Americans placed their hopes in him, only to have them dashed when he capitulated to Hillary Clinton at the 2016 Democratic National Convention.

Had Sanders run instead as an independent workers’ candidate, he would have had a fighting chance against both Trump and Hillary. Even in defeat, he could have changed the course of US history if he had laid the foundations for a mass socialist party. Given the trajectory of the last ten years, it could have grown into a mass party by now, potentially supplanting one or both capitalist parties.

Even with all the reformist confusions that would have inevitably accompanied it, this would have been a massive step forward for American workers. For the first time, they would have had a viable party that, at least ostensibly, was by and for their class.

Instead, a historic moment was lost. In 2020, Sanders squandered a second opportunity, and he has continued his subservience to the status quo ever since. The mass of class anger that followed the 2008 crisis was instead channeled electorally into Trump’s right-wing populism.

Valuable time has been lost—but history wastes nothing. As a result of these experiences, the working class has learned sobering lessons about the nature of both ruling-class parties. They tested Trump out, and he has failed to deliver—twice. Following the 2024 elections, we wrote:

A lack of concrete and lasting results will lead to disappointment and a renewed search for even more radical solutions. Eventually, the class questions will come clearly to the fore, and the pendulum will swing decisively to the left.

We are seeing the beginning of this pendulum swing today. For the first time in Gallup’s history, support for socialism has surged to 43%. That’s 116 million people. 57% of 18–34-year-olds support socialism over capitalism—approximately 33 million young people.

The word “socialism” has gone mainstream and no longer scares people. Exit polls showed that 33% of those who voted in the 2026 midterms have a favorable opinion of socialism.

A Times/Siena poll from May reported that two-thirds of voters say “the system needs major changes or to be torn down entirely,” and that deeply disillusioned voters are “more likely to view socialism positively … suggesting that Americans’ deep and growing frustration may be driving some voters to consider socialism.”

This sea change in public opinion has found an electoral expression in the Democratic Socialists of America. In September, Gallup found that 38% of Americans had a favorable opinion of DSA.

DSA has at least won seven seats in the US House of Representatives. This includes Claire Valdez and Darializa Avila Chevalier from New York City, Melat Kiros in Colorado, Chris Rabb in Pennsylvania, and Donavan McKinney in Michigan. They will join sitting DSA members Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Rashida Tlaib in Congress in January. The DSA also endorsed Senator-elect Abdul El-Sayed, who has said he is not a socialist but whose populist and anti-Zionist program is closely aligned with this new left-wing “Bloc.”

Although seven members of the House out of 435 is a tiny minority, it is still the highest number of self-described socialists ever to sit in the lower chamber of the federal government.

The DSA candidates who won their primaries ran on policies such as universal healthcare—which is supported by two-thirds of Americans—and abolishing ICE. Adriano Espaillat, the defeated Democratic incumbent in New York’s 13th District, called himself a “progressive” and claimed to run for “affordability, healthcare, justice, and dignity for all New Yorkers.” He also accepted $2 million from pro-Israel PACs during his five terms, ranking 10th in Congress for most money accepted from the Zionist lobby.

Chevalier, who defeated him, used her campaign to connect the poverty faced by workers in her district with US “aid” to Israel. She took the opportunity to pose the question: why should workers, who keep New York City running, live in poverty in the wealthiest country in history? She declared that the money used by “our government” to fund a genocide in Palestine instead should be used to fund housing and healthcare.

The Democratic Party: a political dead end

While the undeniable leftward shift is a positive symptom of the changing mood, the election raises crucial strategic questions that the US left is not tackling head on.

Like most campaigns run or endorsed by DSA, the above-mentioned candidates ran as Democrats, the main party of the capitalist class. This is a fatal strategic mistake. Socialists in Congress will be affiliated with politicians and institutions responsible for attacking the working class. Despite their intentions, the DSA representatives will be forced to fall in line, with the result that the DSA becomes indistinguishable from the Democrats—a party that is rightly despised by millions of workers.

The DSA is also giving the Democrats a convenient left cover. The DNC establishment has begrudgingly gone along with the DSA candidates’ victories. They have used DSA’s youthful, “outsider” energy to somewhat rejuvenate their tired image.

Plenty of the Democratic Party’s creatures would like nothing more than to purge these “dangerous insurgents.” Case in point is El-Sayed’s primary opponent, Haley Stevens. A self-described “proud and life-long Democrat,” Stevens endorsed the Republican candidate. A Zionist Democrat through and through, she preferred endorsing the GOP to being associated with a political “outsider” and outspoken critic of Israel. James Carville, a long-time DNC strategist and quintessential swamp monster, also said he would rather the GOP win than give wind to DSA.

But other layers of the party are hedging their bets. They can tell which way the wind is blowing, and are willing to use the progressive credentials of DSA and DSA-adjacent candidates to brighten their image in preparation for 2028. Obama, for example, campaigned for El-Sayed. But even these cynical elements have no intention of letting the party become anything but a tool for the capitalists.

There has been plenty of speculation about a potential presidential or Senate run by AOC in two years. Although status-quo liberals like Jon Ossoff or even Gavin Newsom are more likely to fit the bill, the Democrats might yet put her forward as someone who can bridge the gap between the “insurgents” and the “insiders.” Nancy Pelosi, as establishment as they come, even recently said that AOC was “a joy to work with”—certianly more so in recent years.

AOC’s political trajectory should be instructive for the DSA. Starting as an outsider in 2018, she quickly warmed up to Pelosi and the rest of the DNC party machine. She refused to vote down funding for Israel’s Iron Dome in 2021 and 2025, and shamefully voted to ban a railroad workers’ strike in 2022. In her eight years in office, she’s done nothing to make socialism an independent reference point for the working class, in opposition to the ruling-class parties.

It’s not just a lack of organizational discipline that makes it hard for DSA to “keep their electeds accountable,” or keep them acting as a coherent bloc. Above all, it’s the result of approaching politics from a conventional—i.e., a bourgeois—standpoint. If they run as individuals on a capitalist party ticket, they’ll inevitably operate that way in office, too.

A serious strategy should begin with a clear objective: what is it we’re trying to achieve? If the socialist movement doesn’t define victory, it won’t be able to judge whether it’s moving toward it or not.

The goal of socialists should be to achieve socialism. This means the actual seizure of political power by the working class and the establishment of a workers’ state. This can only be achieved through class independence and revolutionary class struggle.

The logic of the bourgeois electoral arena has a different aim altogether—getting individuals voted into office, full stop. Playing by the rules of this game means running on the Democratic Party ballot line with “progressive” campaigns limited to liberal reforms and minor budgetary, tax, or legislative initiatives. Inevitably, this method leads to disappointment, backtracking on campaign promises, and blending in with the system.

Running socialist candidates independently of the two ruling parties won’t be easy. But class independence is the only way to advance toward our goal. The mass discontent in society can only find a rallying point if socialists draw a firm line of demarcation from the parties of the system—which millions of people want to “tear down.”

DSA could use its resources and mobilize its base to run independent socialist candidates across the country. In 2016, the DSA had no one in Congress. The sheer number of seats the Democrats won will make it hard for them to “hold the speakership hostage” by refusing to vote for Hakeem Jeffries. But instead of parliamentary shenanigans, they could form the nucleus of a real “anti-system” bloc within Congress, to supplement mass mobilizations in the streets and strikes in workplaces.

This would mean maintaining their independence from both ruling parties, putting forward a workers’ candidate for Speaker, and openly defending a socialist program at all times. They should not vote or horse trade with the Democrats (or the Republicans), and should only put forward their own pro-worker proposals. The first steps will be hardest, but the payoff will be immense: for the first time in US history, a genuine socialist bloc will become a workers’ opposition within the legislative belly of the beast.

The way forward

This year has shown several bright spots indicating the road forward. Independent socialist candidates got more votes than at any other point in recent memory. These candidates had miniscule media attention, yet they collectively received over 100,000 votes.

On the basis of a resolution to break with the Democrats, Rhode Island DSA ran Brittany Kubicek as an independent socialist for the state’s General Assembly. She received 23% of the vote. In Ohio, Greg Levy from the Party for Socialism and Liberation got 94,000 votes. In Massachusetts, Joe Tache, also of the PSL, ran for the US Senate against the Democrats and Republicans and got 2.2% of the statewide vote—54,000 votes. With no corporate or PAC money, he raised over $270,000. Andre Easton, also of the PSL, got around 8.7% of the vote, with around 10,600 votes in New York’s 15th congressional district, almost as many as the Republican candidate.

These results show that class-independent candidates can get more than a token echo. Just imagine what would be possible if the whole of DSA—which claims a membership of 120,000—put its energy into launching a genuine working-class alternative. And if organized labor mobilized its millions of members and significant resources behind such an effort, the Democrats and Republicans would be finished. The formation of a mass, class-independent workers’ party in the US will be the greatest step forward in the American socialist movement’s history yet.

But the electoral front isn’t the only channel for mass class anger. We must carefully study and learn from recent events in Europe and Brazil. Given the vast piles of combustible material strewn across society, a single spark can unleash an elemental upsurge of mass, militant class anger that leaps over the heads of the reformists and trade union leaders.

A Harvard poll taken a few weeks before the election found that 68% of American voters said the protests in France were mainly driven by economic problems and government debt, the rising cost of living, or distrust of political elites. Three-quarters think it’s likely that the US will face similar unrest. Signs and symptoms of the pressurized class rage building among American workers are everywhere. It will eventually burst forth with the same force and passion of their European and Brazilian class brethren.

Nationwide general strikes, million-strong street demonstrations, and calls for expropriation of the Fortune 500 may become staples of the American class struggle sooner than we expect. The events of January 23 in Minneapolis were just a foretaste of what is to come. The task of communists in the US is to urgently prepare for this perspective.