 The U.S. midterm elections held on November 8th have thrown up a mixed result. Many had predicted a Republican wave across the country. However, while the Republicans are likely to take control of the House of Representatives, there is no evidence of the wave as the Democrats have a chance of retaining the Senate. What do the early results tell us about the political situation in the U.S.? Eugene Perrier of Breakthrough News explains. I think my biggest takeaway from the midterm elections, at least as it stands now, but really quite frankly kind of given whatever the most likely outcomes one way or another, is that the unprecedented challenges that are facing the country at large, the world, certainly the working class here in the United States, are of such a great extent. Yet the two major political parties are so lacking in terms of their actual solutions that don't meet the scale of the problem. So not really solutions at all. That neither was able to really muster much of a convincing win, if you will, or effort in terms of the broader country. And so the political situation, the status quo continues to look extraordinarily bifurcated, extraordinarily fractured and extraordinarily polarized between the two political parties and between really the two polls left and right. I think for the Republicans who were widely expecting to get a major victory on the scale of some of the larger midterm victories, based, one, just on the history that tends to give control of Congress to the party opposing the president, at least the House of Representatives, in the off-year elections, the non-presidential elections, but also, of course, because the Democrats have failed to offer any real substantive solution to inflation, that they've failed to offer substantive solutions to really many of the things that animate the base of the Democratic Party, whether it be climate change, whether it be a woman's right to choose and the right to abortion, whether it be the issue of voting rights. I mean, so many of these crucial issues, labor rights as well, the rights of the Unionists, all these crucial issues that are so important to the Democratic base, the Democrats essentially were unable to deliver anything of substance. And so I think Republicans were hoping to be able to capitalize on the possible disillusion of Democrats and the fact that some people may actually blame the Democrats for some of the problems like inflation that they're facing, and that ultimately did not materialize. Their attempt to use an extraordinarily racist crime-focused narrative that was based on a total distortion of what was happening in the country also seems to have really crashed on the rocks and not been very effective in either moving their own voters, very few of whom said they were deeply motivated by this issue or actually affecting that many races. And in fact, some of the races where this was the biggest factor the Republicans did very poorly. And so their extreme racist campaign also did not help them capitalize on this moment. So across the board, the Republicans were unable to capitalize because they themselves have no answer for inflation and back the Federal Reserve attempt to induce a recession. And certainly many of their claims on other issues certainly ring hollow. The Democrats are certainly, and from their own position, you might say rightfully, celebrating the fact that they were not totally wiped out, purely because it really looked like their inability to make things happen for the voters that tend to lean more towards the Democratic Party, mainly working class, oppressed voters, the lowest income people, and so on and so forth, that they would in fact not be able to withstand the so-called red wave because many of their own supporters wouldn't show up and the other side might be very motivated and people who can go either way might blame them for their problems. So they're essentially celebrating the fact that they didn't get punished for failing to actually deliver for their own base. But when you take a step back, I think what that really all means is that the country, the United States in and of itself, is not anywhere close to as right-wing as people think it is and an extraordinary right-wing campaign designed to capitalize on all the weakness of the Democrats and making major efforts to press racism, homophobia, and other agendas to the forefront, you know, the pro-life agenda, quote-unquote, against a woman's right to choose, that all of that was not able to actually move the country significantly. And in fact, we saw the opposite. You know, you look at a state like Michigan where you can see in Kentucky, in Vermont and other places where ballot initiatives around a woman's right to choose drove many different people to the polls, certainly to win that, but in the state of Michigan to really defeat the Republicans at almost every single level. You know, you're seeing states like Massachusetts passed taxes, higher taxes on millionaires. So you see across the board that not only were Republicans unable to capitalize with their extraordinarily ultra-right message, but that in various ballot measures, in various states, in various races, voters also were able to deliver, you know, more progressive verdicts in terms of what took place. So I think bottom line when you look at the big takeaway from this midterm, I think it's that all of the hype about how much the country is turning to the right is not really as much substance as it seems to be. Head of the elections, many had expressed concern over the possibility of a legislative grid log due to the Republican advance. The Democrats effectively had control over the presidency and the houses of Congress after the 2020 election. However, they were not able to deliver on many of their promises. What is the remainder of the president Joe Biden's term said to look like? You know, it's gonna be interesting to see how the political agenda moves from here. I mean, the challenge that the Republicans, of course, will have is that they will have a very slim majority and that the vast majority of Republicans are going to be the, or at least the plurality of Republicans, I should say, will really be the organized far right, the organized hard right. And Republicans will not be able to do much in the house without those people agreeing, which means that the basis by which they can negotiate with the Senate and negotiate with the White House will be very, very narrow, which I think makes the most likely scenario continued political gridlock. And the question that that raises is whether or not the Biden administration will move more aggressively toward executive actions that don't require Congress, which many people have been urging them to do for some years now, since he came in in 2020 in order to try to break the logjam and try to deliver more progressive priorities. It seems that Biden has not wanted to go in that direction. So it either means that he will acquiesce to intense gridlock or he will cut deals that will be extraordinarily right wing and that will lean towards the right wing status quo in the house, which will really be the center of the political center of gravity around which almost all compromises will have to be made because they will have the ability really to shut down and to stop anything that they don't like from the likely speaker, Kevin McCarthy. And then of course there is the opportunity, the chance of wildcard things potentially happening on a range of different fronts. Is there a possibility there could be wildcard action against the unlimited US funding for the war in Ukraine if the cost of living crisis gets even worse between the far right Republicans and some progressive Democrats can they put together votes to make a difference in the house? Does that start to upset some of the political calculus? So I think it could be a weird combination of both sort of gridlock, far right wing compromises between all three elements of the governing process and sort of chaotic realities that will break in different ways, depending on what the issue may be, which means I think that the role of class struggle and the struggle in the streets will be even more enhanced in this period because that will really be the only way that I think most people who are not really heavily represented by a Congress that's dominated by a minority party, all of whose positions have only minority support in the population, really the street struggle will be the only way that people can shape the political agenda, but it'll also shape the imperatives. It'll shape whether or not the Biden administration is whether willing to move more aggressively on executive actions. It'll shape whether or not the Senate is willing to scrap some of its archaic rules to see if they might be able to find a way to force through some sort of agenda by playing on the slim majority of House members trying to win people over, or whether or not there will be progressive Democrats looking to sort of strike out on their own and see if they can break up the right wing consensus in the leadership of the House of Representatives and open up some new terrain for different things to emerge on certain individual issues, where there's a lot of anger amongst the rank and file on the right and the left. So gridlock, chaos, even further moves to the right, I think is basically what we can expect to see. So a little bit more of the status quo, but I think perhaps a little less predictable. Many analysts have termed the elections as a setback to Donald Trump and his supporters in the Republican Party. Some of the candidates he endorsed failed at the hustings and some of his rivals emerged victorious. What does the future hold for Donald Trump and the extreme right wing of the Republican Party? You know, I think the way that these midterms affect Trump himself and also the broader MAGA movement should be very interesting. And I think one thing that we have to note at the outset is, you know, the more long drawn out challenges there are to any of the elections in the context of the midterms, the more opportunity there is for the growth of political violence. I mean, right now it seems relatively limited in terms of where that motion is. Of course, Trump and some of his supporters have alleged fraud. There's some moves in the courts in some states, Arizona, to make a big push around some of the alleged issues which seem to be, by the way, totally fake around quote unquote voter fraud. But by and large, many of the Republicans who have lost and acknowledged their losses, many of them were actually people who were sort of promoting this election denying agenda of former President Trump. And they of course have conceded, which seems to me that there may not be an extended period of challenges. But there could be, and I think that in and of itself is its own wildcard that could create this period of uncertainty around the control of the government that opens up a lot of space for the street struggle from the point of view of the right to try to intimidate the process and move it in their direction. And of course that I think will provoke a backlash and a response from people who don't want their vote to be erased. I think the key question is, does this hurt Donald Trump standing amongst the voters in the Republican Party and the broader sort of MAGA movement that's taken over the Republican Party? A number of sort of right-wing influencers, Candace Owens and others have been kind of downplaying Trump a little bit after this. And I think perhaps some people feel he was responsible for some of the losses in different ways, but the fact of the matter is he does remain overwhelmingly the most popular person to run. But I think those like Ron DeSantis and others will be trying to find ways to use this result where the Republicans were unable to capitalize in the way that I think many of them thought they could. So suggest that it was Trump's name or Trump's actions that really helped sink the Republicans at the ballot. And it's obviously Trump's personage, his own policies, his own rude, crude demeanor undoubtedly affects the standing and the brand of the Republican Party. But I think the real question is, is whether any of these other individuals can capture the same zeitgeist of Trump? And I don't think so. I mean, almost all of the other figures you hear about, the Ron DeSantis of the world, the Nikki Haley's, I mean, they're kind of counter-Trump's, they're career politicians, the type of people who never could have sparked a movement like Trump was able to do and who only actually surged in the prominence by riding Trump's coattails. And so I don't think that there's a one-to-one thing, but I do think we can expect an intensification inside of the MAGA movement itself to start to look for a greater diversification of leaders and to move beyond just Trump itself. I think that will be interesting. And also, whether or not this will empower those who are against Trump within the Republican Party to make a move against him. But I don't expect either of those two things to be likely. I think Trump will find a way to reconsolidate his control over the Republican Party. I think he really has the grassroots, but it's gonna certainly be interesting to see how this plays out in terms of the inner effects of what's happening on the right wing. The Senate and House elections were not the only interesting races on November 8. A number of ballot measures were passed in various states which led to progressive outcomes. What are these measures and what do they signify? You know, I think there's a number of really interesting things that happen in terms of ballot measures where people are able to just go directly and vote for a question. In Kentucky, which is certainly a very heavily Republican state, we can see that question too, which was to protect the right to abortion, was able to, well, it failed essentially because it was essentially to tighten the laws around abortion. But ultimately, a very large majority of people, so that means most Democrats and a very significant number of Republicans came out to defend a woman's right to choose and a right to abortion. I think that was a big victory. In Michigan, you also had a similar question that was on the ballot, which was also to defend the right to abortion and that was able to succeed significantly. As was an amendment in Michigan that was to the state constitution there around voting rights and was enshrining some of the things in the state of Michigan that the Democrats failed to enshrine by not passing the John Lewis Voting Rights Act at the federal level. So those two things combined, not only succeeded, but I think really played the key role in helping the Michigan Democrats take both houses of the state legislature and all statewide seats. We saw in the states of Maryland and Missouri, there is the war on drugs, took another significant hit, marijuana was legalized in those two states, which are two major states in the country and polar opposites, right? Missouri is a so-called deep red state, well, of recent vintage. And Maryland, of course, is a deep blue state. So you can see across the political spectrum more and more anger at these low-level drug offenses that have destroyed so many millions of lives over the years. The state of Massachusetts passed a higher tax on millionaires, increasing the tax on millionaires and also expanded the rights of undocumented people in the country by allowing them to get driver's licenses, which is really the key to being able to access a lot of public services in a lot of different places. So that was also a sort of flew under the radar but a signal victory in the state of Illinois. And what I think is actually the first ever ballot measure of this type in the history of the United States, voters voted overwhelmingly to enshrine the right to a union in the state constitution. So to prevent anti-union forces from being able to pass a range of different laws against unions by putting these rights firmly in the state's constitution, another significant one that was also able to pass. And in Washington DC, the nation's capital, there was an initiative that will essentially eliminate the tipped minimum wage more or less or raise it. People who are tipped workers, mainly who are working in restaurants are were legally allowed to be paid below the minimum wage. This ballot measure will end that process. And deep injustice, of course, it has deep roots quite frankly, actually in the history of slavery in this country, which is a deeper, separate story, but that is really the roots of tipping in the United States and the service sector. So that was another big victory for progressive forces that I think many people were looking to see, it failed the last time it came up a few years ago. So for it to win this time, it was a big defeat over the huge lobby, the other NRA, the National Restaurant Association that pushes against any rights for workers in the service sector with tens of millions of dollars every single year. So across the country, red states, blue states, wherever you can imagine, you could see that there were a number of progressive things that when put to voters themselves, even people who consider themselves Republicans or consider themselves conservatives, were willing to vote for an agenda which could broadly be considered progressive, which I think yet again gives lie to this idea that it's just an unredeemable half of the country is quote unquote deplorables or whatever it was that Hillary Clinton called them, but it's that a much more complicated scenario with complicated contradictory consciousness, but that many, many progressive ideas are very popular and really all it takes is to fight for them.