Democrats did better than expected in the midterm. Because the result is also a success for the American left.
Greg Casar was elected in Texas Photo: Montinique Monroe/afp
What is the history of these Midterms? There are many: The red wave of Republicans did not present itself in the US congressional elections, also because some of Donald Trump’s candidates were weak. Even so, the House of Representatives will soon have even more Republicans backing Trump’s lie about the stolen presidential election.
Democrats are expected to have lost a majority in at least one house of Congress, but overall they have done better than expected. Inflation and abortion rights were the dominant themes in the elections, which attracted more young people than they had in a long time.
If you take a closer look, there are developments that give hope. There’s a lot to be said for describing the Midterms as a success for the US left in the Democratic Party. In many places offensive and emancipatory campaigns have been rewarded with positive results.
One example is the campaign of Summer Lee, who is in the 12th constituency from Pennsylvania, in and around Pittsburgh, won the race. Lee took office with a clear vision, and has emphasized the individual points several times: a state health fund for all, a Green New Deal, a reform of the judicial system, the strengthening of unions.
“Go on!”
Such a program can be called radical or reasonable, having come to reality. According to polls, the majority of the US population has long supported Lee’s demands.
Lee’s election campaign lasted a full year. He initially faced a fellow Conservative who was backed by the party establishment in the Democratic primary. A hard-fought race, which he narrowly won. In the general election, the 34-year-old then faced Republican Mike Doyle, a hardliner who wants to criminalize abortion and stop immigration.
Summer Lee triumphed in the 12th Pennsylvania circuit Photo: Salwan Georges/The Washington Post/Getty Images
But Lee didn’t fight alone. He has been supported by progressive organizations such as the Justice Democrats, the Working Families Party and the Sunrise Movement, who have sent their members door-to-door to mobilize. The big effort was needed mainly because Lee had a number of conservative pressure groups with a lot of capital against him, groups that wanted a lot, but certainly no left-wing black women in parliament.
In January, Lee will move to the House of Representatives in Washington. “We have shown what a real working class movement can look like in this country,” he said on election night. “Let’s keep going! We can’t afford to take a day off,” he continued. “Okay, one day, but not two,” he added.
mobilization from the left
A mobilization of the left could also celebrate important successes in other parts of the country. In Kentucky, an attempt to enshrine abortion bans in the constitution was rejected by a majority of voters. Various leftist movements had coordinated there months in advance, allowing enough people to say no. In California, Michigan and Vermont, voters voted to protect abortion rights through the state constitution.
In Illinois, a legislative change that structurally strengthens unions was approved by referendum. The same is expected in Michigan, where the House will switch to Democrats for the first time in 40 years. Historically also the result of an initiative in New Mexico, which resulted in parents now being entitled to free childcare. In various other states, marijuana has been decriminalized and the minimum wage has been raised.
If people have the possibility to decide directly on specific content, this has become clear with these midterms, this possibility is often used in an emancipatory way. Furthermore, where candidates ran with a credible and bold social justice agenda, victories tended to emerge. Summer Lee is just one of many names to keep in mind.
Names to remember
Delia Ramirez was also elected to the House of Representatives Photo: John Kim/ZUMA/imago
There would be Greg Casara 33-year-old socialist who stood out as a voice for workers’ and tenants’ rights during his years on the Austin city council and will now represent Texas in the US House of Representatives.
There would be Delia Ramirez, 39, who currently sits in the Illinois state legislature and previously battled homelessness for years. She was also recently elected to Congress.
And there would be Maxwell FrostBorn in 1997 and until recently an Uber driver, he became known in Florida as an activist against gun violence and will now become the first representative of Generation Z in Washington.
These four will expand the so-called Squad, as the small faction of leftist MPs around Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez call themselves, all re-elected to the Midterms. Together with the few left-wing members of the Senate, in particular Bernie Sanders, of course, they form a still small force within the Democratic Party, but one that grows with each election.
If there is any hope for a reorientation of the Democratic Party, then it is this wing, says the sociologist Jonathan Smuckerwhich deals with social movements. While the Democrats have been playing politics for too long “for the well-to-do in the suburbs,” squadrismo made clear what the party was and still could be: “A party oriented to the needs of ordinary working people,” says Smucker, who campaigned for the Democrats in Pennsylvania.
Freer, more forward-looking, more fun
So far, the mainstream media has mostly emphasized biographies of new left-wing members of Congress: They are under 40, non-white, and come from immigrant families. More politically significant, however, is that Lee, Casar, Ramirez and Frost have prevailed with an agenda distinct from the party mainstream.
Maxwell Frost will be Washington’s youngest congressman Photo: Stephen M. Dowell/ap
They are pursuing a freer politics because they are independent of corporate donations, more forward-looking because climate change affects everything they do, more enthusiastic about what can be heard in communication and campaigns, and yes, even more radical in this sense because they are not only weakened symptoms, but they want to permanently change people’s material living conditions.
When asked whether Texas is a Republican state, Greg Casar said in a televised interview on election night, “Texas is not a red state, it’s an underorganized state.” This generation greatly prefers Marxist analysis to moral distinction.
If one looks back at the electoral successes of the left in recent years, a decisive dynamic emerges. From the outset, individual candidacies have been supported by non-parliamentary organisations. The budget of the Justice Democrats, founded in 2017 by activists from Bernie Sanders’ team, who target a handful of candidates each election year and accompany them strategically and financially. Without the Justice Democrats, the team would not exist.
“Make the terrain hostile to a few”
They appear wider in mass and more locally anchored Democratic Socialists of America, DSA for short, which has grown from fewer than 10,000 members to nearly 100,000 since 2016. By midterm this year, 77 percent of supported candidates were successful, says Kristian Hernandez, who lives in Dallas, Texas, and serves on the board of directors of DSA. “Now we are better at running electoral campaigns.”
In recent years, however, it has also become increasingly clear that one should not intervene only where leftist structures and prospects for early success already exist. “We have a responsibility as the largest socialist organization,” Hernandez says. Sometimes it’s just a matter of “making the terrain less hostile”.
He means states where Republicans are in power and are increasingly deliberately bypassing democratic mechanisms. It’s called “minority government”: authoritarian governments that ignore the will of voters. This constellation alone shows that the conditions for leftist politics in the United States are still precarious.
