Trump’s agenda faces its first nationwide test as Democrats are poised to take control of Congress

Voters in the United States will go to the polls on Tuesday 3 November following two years of the most right-wing and unpredictable presidential administrations in the country’s history. Voters will now have their chance to give a verdict, and the early signs for Republicans look bleak.

Yet despite foreboding polls, the American right has never been able to advance its policy agenda as it has under Trump’s second administration.

Trump’s Second-Term Wins for the Right

In the culture war against a more inclusive and progressive society, the right has managed to instil fear into its enemies and roll back some of the gains of the last century. The campaign waged by ICE has terrorized working-class immigrant neighborhoods through waves of high-profile mass kidnappings, detentions, and deportations. The ruthlessness with which this project was pursued has also made the United States far less welcoming to immigrants from abroad. That’s a major victory for a reactionary right obsessed by “great replacement theory” paranoia.

Thanks to Trump’s Supreme Court appointments in his first administration, abortion rights at a national level had already been repealed in 2022. Under Trump II, anti-feminists in the “manosphere” and the anti-LGTBQ movement have gained ground. This is reflected in a noticeable decline in support for queer relationships and gay marriage. Attacks on the funding of universities and basic science research have also placed the right’s perceived opponents in higher education on the defensive.

Trump’s Economy: AI and Inequality

For reactionaries, the situation is just as rosy in the economy. Trump has brought with him an especially aggressive approach to loosening the remaining restraints on the free market, which has had its desired effect. Pride of place here should be given to Trump’s tax cuts for the rich — pushed through in the “Big Beautiful Bill” — which are turbocharging our “Age of Inequality.” Although they were partially balanced by cutbacks to health insurance and the country’s social safety net, the national debt has grown significantly (making the task for those supporting greater social spending in the future that much harder).

In a payout to the Republicans’ staunchest allies in the corporate world in the energy sector, the transition away from fossil fuels and countless other initiatives for addressing the climate catastrophe have been irreparably damaged. Likewise, the purge of government agencies and regulators, plus executive orders which have hobbled public sector unions, have throttled two of the few remaining checks on corporate power.

But Trump’s most lasting economic legacy may turn out to be the carte blanche he has given to his allies in the tech sector to develop, with almost no restrictions, artificial intelligence. The physical and environmental impact alone is notable: the landscape of many American states is now littered with data centers. But the longer term impact will be measured in the effects on the labor market, on expanding corporate power, on unleashing new waves of hacking and cyberwarfare, and the possibility of a major economic bubble. All that is still to be determined.

US Imperialism and the Donroe Doctrine

Yet Trump has not stopped fulfilling the boldest ambitions of the far right there: Trump II has revived Victorian-era imperialism, complete with a new glorification of US military might. Secretary of State Marco Rubio has been installed as the US’s viceroy in Venezuela, overseeing a process of recouping US investors’ assets and revenue streams.

The new 2026 National Security Strategy has reasserted US claims to suzerainty over all of Latin America — while Trump-allied right-wing parties are on the brink of taking power in most countries in South America. The administration has provided nearly unrelenting support for the genocide in Gaza and Israel’s war of conquest in Lebanon. Of course, Trump has also taken the lead in the new war on Iran — though the far-from-victorious course of the war has defused some of Trump’s imperialist verve.

That is the balance sheet of the consequences of Trump’s return to power. The American right could not have asked for a more loyal and ruthless execution of its program.

Immigration, ICE and Latino Voters

But even for an era of American politics uniquely defined by voter distrust and disgust with politicians of both parties, Trump’s approval rating is remarkably bad. One of the most reliable running average of polls show that his net approval rating (those who approve minus those who disapprove) stands at negative 22 percent in early October — twice as bad as his negative 12 percent at this point in 2018 in his first term, and far worse than Joe Biden’s negative 10 percent in 2022.

There are far too many credible explanations for the depths of unpopularity being reached by Trump II. But widespread dissatisfaction, including among many Republicans, with the War on Iran, rising gas prices, and the AI build out are especially plausible.

It would also be a mistake to underestimate the monumental error Trump has made in pursuing his aggressive deportation campaign, which has terrorized Latino communities in some of the most electorally-competitive parts of the country. The 2024 General Election briefly indicated that Latino voters could be won over to the Republican Party. But gains made by the Republican Party two years ago have been erased. The party is now more reviled by Latino voters than it has been at any point in the last decade. (but of course for the true believers on the right who seek the racial purification of the US population through deportation, the price may be worth it.)

Can Democrats Win the House and Senate?

Mounting public opposition to Trump has thrown Republicans on to the defensive in the battle for control of Congress. All seats in the House of Representatives and a third of the seats in the Senate are up for election. The most recent projections show Democrats leading in 213 congressional races — ten short of the 218 needed for a majority. A further 21 seats will be closely fought, and given the trends at the moment it seems likely Democrats will pick up enough seats to take control of the House.

Democratic gains would have been more significant had Republicans not redrawn the district lines in many states to tilt the results in favor of the GOP; a process known as “gerrymandering” that both parties have made more and more use of in recent years. (Other Republican efforts to dampen voter turnout in minority communities could also have an effect on election outcomes, but we won’t know how big that effort will be until closer to Election Day.)

The real fight this year, however, will be for control of the Senate.

A year ago, most observers gave Democrats slim odds for victory, but the last few months have changed that. Usually reliably Republican states like Iowa, Alaska, and Ohio look promising for Democrats. Democrats could pull off an upset victory in Texas, and are even running competitive campaigns — at least according to recent polls — in Kansas and South Carolina. An independent union activist challenging a Republican in Nebraska is also running a competitive race.

If Democrats have an especially good final few weeks of campaigning, they could conceivably retake control of the Senate with 52, 53, or even 54 of the 100 seats.

Republicans seem to have succeeded, so far, in preventing this dire scenario from provoking an internal war. But an especially bad result could increase the likelihood of a succession fight after the election to replace Trump as the party’s leader.

The most likely contest would be one between Trump’s two heirs apparent: Vice President JD Vance and Secretary of State Marco Rubio. Of the two, Vance is the more loyal defender of Trump’s domestic agenda, and has claim to a more natural alliance with the Republican’s new corporate allies in the tech sector (by way of his billionaire patron Peter Thiel) and the far right fringe. He is also the more sceptical of the two — or so it has been claimed — of Trump’s imperial adventures in the last two years. Rubio by contrast has been the architect of Trump’s new aggressive foreign policy, and is the more likely candidate to win the support of what remains of Republican “moderates.”

These differences do not map neatly on to plausible programmatic divisions in the party going forward however: will there be a debate in the Republican Party about the electoral consequences of its deportation blitz? Will there be a reconsideration of the party’s unrestricted support for the growth of artificial intelligence? And what will become of the party’s trade policy?

If debates break out on any or all of these questions, it’s not clear how Vance and Rubio will align themselves, nor whether other challengers might emerge to lead the party.

For many of those who have been repelled by Trump’s project since its birth more than ten years ago, any note of cautious optimism about electoral troubles for Trump will sound naive. They can hardly be blamed; even when Trump lost the 2020 presidential election the final result was significantly closer than many had expected. It is far too soon to write obituaries for MAGA, and even if the midterm results deliver a negative verdict for the right, its odds of renewal in the not-to-distant future should not be discounted.

The Democratic Socialist Surge

But the United States is also changing, and in some important respects, significantly for the better.

Here the greatest cause for hope is the success of the electoral insurgency waged by the left in the last two years.

Beginning with the breakthrough victory of New York City’s Zohran Mamdani as mayor last year, this movement has only grown since.

It reached new heights this summer in a slew of victories for candidates of the left, including Abdul El-Sayed — who won the Democratic nomination for Senate in Michigan — as well as five New York congressional candidates backed by Mamdani’s organization, the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA).

These five new democratic socialists will almost certainly win election in November, since they are running to represent “deep blue” districts. They are: Chris Rabb (Pennsylvania), Claire Valdez (New York), Darializa Avila Chevalier (New York), Donavan McKinney (Michigan), and Melat Kiros (Colorado). Assuming they all win, they will bring the democratic socialist foothold in Congress to seven, including incumbents Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (New York) and Rashida Tlaib (Michigan).

It would be hard to overstate the dramatic break with history here. DSA is now the largest left-wing organization in the country’s history in absolute numbers (DSA’s membership crossed the 100,000 mark this year), and socialists have never before had as strong an electoral project as the one that DSA represents. Whatever happens next, DSA is the new, unpredictable factor in US politics for now.

But here also lies the problem for the anti-MAGA forces in the United States. The Democratic Party is now stretched to the extreme across the ideological spectrum. It includes on its right politicians who would fit comfortably, were they dropped into Germany, into the Christian Democratic Union, but it also includes this new crop of candidates who would make their home in Die Linke.

Such differences are already proving far too great for the party to manage. Many in the party’s base and among the new generation of left-elected officials are ready to revolt against the party’s pro-business tilt, its cautious approach to opposing Trump, its reliable support for Israeli governments, and it plodding response to the climate catastrophe. 

The party’s leadership on the other hand is determined to resist the left and , has tried to deflect these challenges as best it can.

The upshot of these internal divisions is visible in the campaign being waged this year. It would be hard to exaggerate the Democratic Party’s lack of a positive message in 2026. Instead, it has left it to individual candidates to tailor their message to their districts and their own ideological inclinations. El-Sayed can campaign in support of Medicare for All in Michigan, while many other Democrat moderates campaign equally vigorously on their support for the current private healthcare system. The only common theme is a general opposition to MAGA.

Just as it did in 2018 and 2020, this may prove sufficient for Democrats to retake control of Congress. But it raises serious questions about what kind of presidential candidate will emerge in 2028 to challenge MAGA. The left increasingly looks to democratic socialist Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, while California Governor Gavin Newsom, Georgia’s Senator Jon Ossoff, former Vice President Kamala Harris, and a number of others have quietly begun to jockey to be the voice of the party’s centrists.

The 2028 presidential campaign, which will begin in earnest at the start of next year, will be more competitive and more consequential than any since 2016. It will be the first time that both parties will simultaneously search for new leadership. Most importantly, it’ll be the arena in which the future of post-Trump America is hashed out.

A German translation of this article was published by “nd.aktuell” as part of as part of a collaboration with the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation.