C.J. Atkins
The US midterm vote was nothing less than a people’s electoral uprising.
At publication time, Democrats were on track for roughly 258 seats in the House of Representatives, their widest margin since 1993, and they flipped Senate seats in states like Iowa, Kansas, Ohio and Texas that party strategists had all but written off a year ago. States that no one thought would be in play, like Mississippi, are still to be determined.
The message behind those numbers is plain: People are tired of paying more for everything while billionaires, oil companies and the president’s own stock portfolio do better than ever.
Gas averaged $4.23 a gallon the week before the election, and the war on Iran has added an extra $1,184 in fuel costs to the average household’s budget since February. Millions have lost health coverage since Republicans let Obamacare subsidies expire and pushed through nearly $1 trillion in Medicaid cuts.
Voters connected the dots, so the new Democratic majority has a mandate and a responsibility to use its power.
Don’t get lost in the hearing room
There will be a strong pull toward investigations. Incoming Oversight Committee chair Robert Garcia sent the White House a two-word message on election night: “Lawyer up.”
The Trump family’s corrupt business deals, the president’s oil stocks, and the conduct of the war all deserve scrutiny. Congress should use its subpoena power to hold those responsible to account. But a Congress that spends two years doing little besides holding hearings will waste this moment.
Working families didn’t turn out for a season of cable news drama. They voted because rent, groceries, prescriptions and childcare are eating their paychecks. They voted because they want to see an end to the mass deportations and the racist attacks on civil rights, women’s rights and LGBTQ rights. They voted because they want to see an end to war.
When 2028 arrives, Democrats must have more to point to than a stack of committee reports.
Working-class mandate
Trump has already promised to become “Mr. Veto.” That’s fine, the new Congress should make him use it, again and again, on bills working people want.
Much of the playbook is already written. The Congressional Progressive Caucus’s New Affordability Agenda calls for doubling overtime pay, capping childcare costs at 7 percent of family income, guaranteed paid vacation and a crackdown on corporate price gouging. The Working Families Party’s Working Families Guarantee points in the same direction.
Incoming House Speaker Hakeem Jeffries has pledged early votes on restoring Affordable Care Act subsidies, reversing the Medicaid cuts and ending Trump’s tariffs. Those should come first, followed by a living wage and a real tax on billionaires to help pay for it all.
Medicare for All belongs on the agenda, too. Abdul El-Sayed, a physician, made it the centerpiece of his campaign and just won Michigan’s Senate seat, becoming the first Muslim senator in US history. Trump would veto it, and the votes for an override aren’t there, but that is no reason to stay quiet.
Hold hearings, bring nurses and families buried in medical debt to testify, bring the bill to the floor, and make every member go on record. Guaranteed healthcare for all won’t win next year, but the ground for winning it after the 2028 elections has to be prepared now.
Labour law reform also belongs near the top of the list. On that point, it’s worth taking note of the role played by the union movement in the November 3 rollback of MAGA.
In Michigan, which showed what a “labour-led people’s coalition” really looks like in practice, union members knocked on over 100,000 doors and made half-a-million phone calls to get out the vote. The United Auto Workers were early out of the gate with their endorsement of El-Sayed, and they pounded the pavement for him in places like Wayne County.
The results are proof of UAW’s effort. As one observer put it, “In every district where there is an auto plant, Abdul smoked it.”
That’s why labour’s priorities must be taken up in Washington when the Republicans lose control in January. An attempt to force a vote on the Protecting the Right to Organize (PRO) Act failed by one vote in the outgoing House. With the new majority, there are no more excuses. Pass it through both chambers and send it to the White House. Let Trump explain to workers why they shouldn’t have the right to organize.
Defend everyone’s rights
The economic fight can’t be separated from the fight for civil rights. After the Supreme Court gutted the Voting Rights Act in Louisiana v. Callais, restoring federal protections for voters through the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act should be a top priority.
Congress should also use its budget authority to stop the Department of Health and Human Services from targeting hospitals that care for trans youth, and it should pass the Equality Act to protect LGBTQ people from discrimination at work, in housing and in public life. Trump’s anti-trans rants didn’t save his party in the midterms, and Democrats have no reason to back down on this issue.
It’s time to also terminate MAGA’s crusade against diversity, equity and inclusion. Strip away the slogans, and the attack on DEI is a blatant effort to roll back decades of civil rights gains for Black, Latino, Asian American and women workers.
The midterm results show that most people aren’t going along with MAGA’s racist, bigoted agenda, and Congress should use its hearings and its funding bills to reverse it.
The power of the purse
Democrats can’t override vetoes, but the control of money will be key. Every appropriations bill, every supplemental request, and next year’s expected debt ceiling fight gives them leverage.
That includes putting a stop-payment order on the deportation machine. Over the past two years, Republicans poured roughly $240 billion into ICE and Border Patrol, much of it with almost no strings attached. Immigrant rights advocates are right to demand that this money be clawed back.
The same goes for the wars. Seventy percent of the country opposes Trump’s assault on Iran. Congress should refuse all funding for it and pass war powers resolutions that force an end to the fighting. That money belongs in schools, healthcare and housing. Ditto for the money that’s still being sent to fund the genocide of Palestinians in Gaza.
And the same budget tools apply to Cuba. Congress can force a vote to end the oil blockade that has left hospitals in the dark and use spending bills to bar funds for enforcing it or for any military action against the island.
Keep the pressure on
None of this will happen just because Democrats hold the gavels. Corporate donors and centrist think tanks are already lobbying to keep the new majority “reasonable,” which usually means timid.
The unions, community organizations and volunteers who knocked on doors and drove turnout to record midterm levels need to stay mobilized and hold the people they elected to their promises. If the Democratic Party starts drifting to the right, it would squander the possibilities that are opening for progress.
MAGA tried a red scare as its closing argument, and it fell flat. Trump and his allies spent months branding Democrats as communists in disguise and casting the president as the last line of defense against the spectre of communism.
It was a midterm panic move, and voters treated it like one. Plenty of Americans, it turns out, are more frightened by their grocery bills than by the word socialism, and a growing number are concluding that it might not be such a bad idea. The “socialist moment” has been building for years, and the midterm results showed it’s picking up speed.
Democratic Party leaders should also look at who is coming up behind them. The NBC News exit poll on November 3 found that 33 percent of voters aged 18 to 29 call themselves “democratic socialists.” These are people who came of age with crushing student debt, rents they can’t afford and jobs with no security.
The centrist, corporate-friendly politics that defined the Democratic Party for decades has little to offer them. If the party wants to keep these voters in 2028 and beyond, it needs to show them it is listening.
Blocking Trump is the floor, the bare minimum to expect from the new Congress. The bigger task is showing working people, in concrete terms, what a government on their side would look like, and building toward a 2028 sweep that can enact it. That is what is to be done.
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