Trump returned to power determined to impose himself as the omnipotent ruler of an authoritarian political order based on violent white supremacy and promoting unchecked capitalist profiteering. But he and his MAGA Republicans’ war on democratic rights has stalled in the face of determined resistance that has left them weakened and in disarray. Now the midterm elections offer a chance to entrench the line of defense against the far-right offensive by voting for the biggest possible victory for Democratic Party candidates, the better to then advance struggles not just in defense of democratic rights, but also to address the worsening economic suffering of working-class and poor people at home, and against imperialist wars abroad.
The Democrats will not solve the multiple crises of racist authoritarianism, worsening economic suffering and spreading wars. All those crises express the deepening crisis of the capitalist system, and the Democratic Party is inextricably tied to the U.S. capitalist class. Indeed, the pro-capitalist policies of its establishment leadership paved the way for the rise of Trumpism and will pave the way for an even more threatening far-right menace in the future – unless a working-class socialist alternative is advanced.
The Democrats serve the capitalists in a very different way than the Republicans – and socialists must understand that fact can be taken advantage of. The Democrats falsely pose as the friends of working-class and oppressed people. They thereby offer the ruling class the possibility of enforcing social stability by using their allied bureaucratic leaders of trade unions, civil rights organizations and NGOs to hold back mass struggles and misdirect popular anger into passive electoralism. But this means the Democrats are tied to important democratic rights that the far-right are attacking – especially the right of people of color to vote and have their vote counted, not to mention the right of trade unions to exist. The Democrats can therefore generally be expected to oppose the MAGA Republicans’ attacks on those rights. So, especially at a moment like the present when mass organization and social struggles are at a low point, electing them can buy vitally necessary time and opportunity to build the mass organizations for struggle that working-class and oppressed people need.
Active resistance to the far-right offensive has been key to the MAGA Republicans’ present crisis. At home, the rampaging gangs of masked ICE foot-soldiers were confronted by brave actions in solidarity with immigrants, especially in Minneapolis, that continued even after the broad-daylight murder of two protesters on the streets. This resistance prompted Trump to pull back from the harshest full-scale invasions of U.S. cities. The success of these protests, as well as the mass “No Kings” demonstrations, should not blind us to the fact that mass organization and the potential for struggle today are still nowhere near as strong as we need.
Abroad, Trump has launched a series of imperialist outrages. But Iran’s success in defending itself and defeating the U.S.-Israeli onslaught has not only dealt an existential blow to U.S. imperialist hegemony; it has also deepened popular opposition to Trump within the U.S..
Rising popular anger at Trump’s responsibility for the worsening cost-of-living crisis, coupled with his shockingly flagrant corruption, has turned to rage and a massive swing to the Democrats in pre-election polls. Thus the midterm elections offer a major opportunity to deal Trumpism a serious defeat. All the more reason for the working class, its oppressed sectors especially, to turn out for a massive defeat of the Republicans, which means voting tactically and defensively for Democratic candidates.
Within the working class, socialists and other class-struggle advocates should work specifically for the electoral victory of socialist and other progressive candidates who have promised to fight for concrete working class needs like Medicare for All and Taxing the Rich. In these cases our attitude is not just defensive support to keep Trumpists out of office, but critical support to elect and hold accountable politicians who claim to side with the working class against corporate capital.
Whether defensive or critical, we use our electoral support to expose the true class nature of the Democratic Party, whose establishment leadership will oppose major working-class gains because of its political ties to and financial dependence on corporate capital. For revolutionary socialists, this fight will help advance working-class political consciousness of both the capitalist system in general and its electoral system in particular, and thereby advance movement towards an independent party of the working class and oppressed people.
Trump’s re-election unleashed an immediate catastrophe for the working class that continues to this day. In the United States the worst consequences have been suffered by the most severely oppressed groups under direct attack, above all Latino, Black, and Muslim immigrants targeted for racist ethnic cleansing through ICE raids and mass deportations.
Trump has continued and extended Biden’s policy of enabling and emboldening Israel to intensify and expand its genocidal wars against the Palestinian as well as the Lebanese and Iranian peoples. The U.S. and Israeli war on Iran is a dramatic escalation of the imperialist assault on the peoples of the Middle East and North Africa. Under Trump the U.S. military has also attacked Yemen, murdered fishermen, migrants and others on boats in the Caribbean, kidnapped the president of Venezuela in order to loot that country’s natural-resource wealth, and imposed deadly draconian sanctions and fuel blockades on Cuba.
As Marxists, we understand that the less severely oppressed layers of the working class do not always recognize the far-right danger in its early stages when it mainly affects others before it affects them directly. Indeed, this is part of what made it possible for Trump to be elected President, especially the second time. But Trump’s policies have undermined even his electoral base.
In 2025, DOGE’s rampages destroyed vital Federal services, and Trunp’s “Big Beautiful Bill” slashed further benefits in order to enrich his billionaire friends. His flailing tariffs and the quagmire of his Iran war have had a disastrous global economic impact, and have also outraged broad layers of the American working class and middle class. Rising gas prices, diesel prices, food prices, mortgage rates, interest rates, and other inflationary effects of the war, squeezing the standard of living of millions of American families, have seriously undermined support for Trump and the Republicans even among the white rural and small town voters who were key to his electoral successes.
The U.S. Constitution, drafted centuries ago as a compromise between Northern merchant and manufacturing capitalists and Southern plantation-holding enslavers, has always been inherently and deeply flawed. But nevertheless it grants the people many precious democratic rights, which we must defend and utilize in our struggles for liberation from all forms of oppression and exploitation. The Constitution designed Congress to act as a check on the power of the President, a role which is urgently necessary for Congress to carry out to the greatest extent possible for the next two years.
Even though Trump has the power to veto bills that are passed by a Democratic majority in Congress, every such veto that the Democrats force Trump to issue will make him and his party even more unpopular, setting the stage for their decisive defeat in 2028. Congressional majorities also have the power to hold investigative and legislative hearings that can expose and put pressure on Trump and his administration on a wide range of issues.
Despite the deep and growing unpopularity of Trump and the Republicans, we cannot afford to be complacent about the outcome of this fall’s election or indeed of any election. First of all, Trump and his lackeys in the Department of Justice have both threatened to interfere and attempted to actually interfere with the elections and with people’s right to vote in numerous ways. The courts have ruled against Trump in most such cases, but voters must remain vigilant in defense of our precious democratic right to vote before, during, and after Election Day. The ACLU provides a useful summary of legal issues related to voting rights and the midterm elections at this link.
www.aclu.org/news/voting-rights/your-questions-answered-how-the-aclu-is-safeguarding-the-2026-midterms
Under a president as reckless and arrogant as Trump, voters must be prepared for all manner of authoritarian acts and provocations during the elections. There is the danger of Trump mobilizing ICE to intimidate and harass people of color. Trump and his lackeys like Stephen Miller may scheme to carry out provocations aimed at triggering counterprotests and mayhem as an excuse to shut down polling places. Opinion polls showing the massive unpopularity of Trump and the Republicans make a general attempt to steal the elections out of the question. But if Trump thinks he needs to subvert elections in a small number of states in order to avoid impeachment, he may stop at nothing, including calling for mobilizations of the National Guard. In such an event, militant mass protests and rallies will be needed.
It is widely expected that the Republicans will lose control of the House of Representatives to the Democrats, but the size of the defeat and of the anti-Trump majority in the House will matter significantly. Certain right-wing Democrats in Congress, such as Tom Suozzi (leader of the anti-DSA caucus), cannot be counted on to reliably stand firm in opposition to Trump and the Republicans on many issues. Several Democrats in Congress have refused to vote against Trump’s Iran war; others including top leaders have opposed Trump’s bypassing of Congress but not the war’s imperialist goals. The larger the Democrats’ majority in Congress, the less beholden they will be to these conservatives. The stronger the Democratic majority, the more it will make reforms seem possible and encourage mass action to demand them.
More urgently, the battle for control of the Senate is much tighter, with very little margin for error. Moreover, Senator Fetterman (who is not up for re-election until 2028) is now a Democrat in name only. To achieve a Fetterman-proof majority in the Senate, Democrats will likely need to defeat Republican candidates in Georgia, Ohio, Michigan, Maine, New Hampshire, Texas, and even Alaska. Other competitive races include Iowa, Kansas, and possibly South Carolina and Florida, while the Republicans have already effectively given up and cut campaign funding in North Carolina.
The Democratic leaders of the two houses of Congress, Chuck Schumer and Hakeem Jeffries, play a very conservative and reactionary role within the party. Although they do not go as far as Fetterman, they are still among the most feeble Democrats in their half-hearted opposition to Trump and the Republicans. Even after the disastrous Biden and Harris campaigns in 2024, they are still willing to risk losing to Trump in order to protect capitalists from small tax increases and support a genocidal ally defending imperialist interests in the Middle East. Socialists should demand that progressive Democrats in Congress challenge Schumer and Jeffries’ leadership, and prominent figures such as Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez should take the lead in this political struggle.
Many of the best-intentioned forces of the socialist left allow their righteous hatred of the Democratic Party to blind them to the need to tactically vote to keep the Republicans out of power. On the one hand, they underestimate the continued threat posed by the far right. For as long as Trump holds the presidency and his allies control the Supreme Court, the threat to democratic rights will remain grave. And that threat is only magnified by new dangers like the threats posed by the development of Artificial Intelligence technology that is presently unchecked by any degree of democratic control.
Socialists who oppose voting for Democrats point to mass organization and struggle as the answer. Those are of course vital needs, but it is foolish to counterpose mass action and electoral tactics – especially when such tactics can help further those goals both by gaining time and by raising working-class political consciousness. Starting with Marx and Engels, socialists have called for voting for capitalist parties that stand for defending democratic rights against reactionary forces – when there is no viable working-class candidate to support.
The DSA now boasts a national membership of over 100,000, mostly young activists. Much of the organization is electorally oriented and has won significant victories through its often excellently planned and executed on-the-ground campaigns for designated candidates. But as a general rule it does not endorse, or even simply call for voting for, other candidates, even progressives and socialists, in primary and general elections. On the national level it could not bring itself to call for the defeat of Trump in 2020 and 2024, when the fascistic nature of his potential rule was readily apparent. This year, in New York for example, it does not call for electorally defeating the Republican Party, even though its favored candidates, if they win, will get nowhere with their pro-working-class programs if the Republicans maintain their Congressional majorities.
Further, DSA seems to have abandoned its former goal of using its successful work inside the Democratic Party to build a base for a future independent working-class party. When its favored candidates backslide on their commitments, DSA often fails to hold them to account, or even to act independently of them in favor of its own program. In sum, DSA offers a poor model of leadership in fighting for the needs and interests of the working class and oppressed people.