Treading The Waters of the Blue Tsunami: Our Analysis of the 2026 Midterms
The world took notice on November 3rd as the Democratic Party, bolstered by a large number of DSA member/endorsed candidates, captured both houses of Congress, and governors' mansions across the country. Progressive ballot measures also did well. Many of our cadres took part in canvassing and other work for these candidates - even though we hold the line that the ruling class will never allow us to vote away their power, we still see electoral work as a key incubator of necessary skills that can be applied to other mass work.
What was the cause of this ‘Blue Tsunami’? Primarily, anger at the Trump fascists’ exacerbation of the inflation crisis through the imperialist war with Iran.
A Bloomberg article sums up the results:
“one clear lesson of the election was that voters came out in droves to express their anger with out-of-control living costs, compounded by an unpopular war on Iran and Trump’s love of tariffs. -In blaming the president who made the midterms a referendum on himself, they also turned it into a bad night for Israel.”
We can already see the liberal establishment funneling every expression of discontent back into the bourgeois electoral machine. While it's true that opposition to the more aggressive factions of the settler state drove the populace to the most basic political action and saw widespread involvement from progressives across the territory to win whatever concessions in our reach, the people's struggle against colonialism and for workers power goes well beyond the ballot box, city hall, statehouse, etc.. War rages on with American tax dollars and union made weapons produced by this country, our neighborhoods continue to be attacked by racist police forces/ICE pigs, and climate disaster is exacerbated by the ruling class's aggressive + unfiltered development of new technologies for profit and repressive purposes. We're forced to reckon with the fact that we're still just as deeply in struggle with the reigning capitalist order, which continues to escalate its fascist arrangement to stave off total collapse.
Acknowledging that electoralism is only one limited field of struggle, what does the ‘Blue Tsunami’ mean to the militant Communist operating in Turtle Island? What does it mean for DSA and how can we take the lessons of these electoral results to guide our work in building working class power?
Per a statement released on the official DSA website:
“This midterm cycle, DSA made history. Over 130 DSA chapters in 43 states supported socialist candidates and ballot measures all across the country, and won. We are poised to win at least 105 seats in elected office and ballot measures that demonstrate Americans’ desire for socialism nationwide.”
Our organization being completely member funded and powered by grassroots efforts, it's worth noting the show of force that our mobilization has proved this election cycle. Even if certain endorsed candidates leave much to be desired, these victories represent a genuine desire from the masses for change beyond the status quo, and the willingness and ability of the DSA to engage with them.
The task remains clear to us in Liberation however, a task we extend to all our comrades in DSA. The struggle carries on. State by state, chapter by chapter, the different results and tasks following them give us a diverse terrain to analyze dialectically going forward. Whether it's establishment victories masquerading as ‘progress’, corporate liberals overtaking grassroots campaigns, or even line-struggle against those positioning themselves as our ‘allies’ and even ‘comrades’, it's very clear to us that regardless of bourgeois election results, our task to mobilize the masses to seize power is one carried out under conditions of occupation. With this in mind, we invited a few of our cadres to share their perspective of the results locally and how it will shape our strategy moving forward.
In the words of Chairman Fred Hampton: “If you dare to struggle, you dare to win. If you dare not struggle, then damn it, you don't deserve to win.”
California
Kevin M. (Gato), East Bay DSA (Steering Committee and Migrant Defense Co-Chair)
Like many other parts of the country, the results of the elections locally will have implications far beyond the city limits and county lines within our various chapter jurisdictions.
While a lot of our local campaigns were able to mobilize and increase our membership toward the cause of building socialism, our successes and failures help us gauge where the masses are at in their organizing capacity as well as evaluating our strategic weaknesses.
On the state level, it's no surprise that establishment democrat Xavier Becerra won the governor's seat. Becerra follows a tradition of aggressive neo-liberalism in charge in Sacramento with a track record of taking big donations from oil industry giants such as Chevron, and also from energy companies Sempra and Southern California Edison. As a member of Congress, he took larger checks from Pacific Gas and Electric and Edison International. He is an enemy of the people. On the other hand, DSA’s congressional bench expanded with Angela Gonzalez-Torres (CA-34).
Meanwhile, the statewide endorsed ‘Billionaires Tax’ has failed. Despite the support from DSA chapters across the state, it’s obvious more work needs to be done among the masses to convince them just who are our class enemies and how we must assert our collective strength against them.
Looking at things more locally, a high profile race continues to be the subject of controversy within our organization. The contradictions heighten in Los Angeles as Nithya Raman is now mayor-elect, bringing her to the of the second largest city in the country, or the biggest city in the world's fifth largest economy (California). Having brushed off the struggle for a Free Palestine, participating in zionist led town halls and even dialing back on her stance towards the LAPD budget, Raman's support from DSA-LA highlights major issues in the application of DSA's politics towards our elected officials, and how serious we take anti-Zionism. Too often, we have seen Palestinian comrades and our own convention resolutions pushed aside for the sake of trifling gains. In the grand scheme of things, a mayoral seat held by one who, for all intents and purposes, is a nominal DSA member, is a trifling thing. In the words of Amilcar Cabral: “Tell no lies, claim no easy victories.” If our words are more than wind, then we need to act like it. Furthermore, the right opportunist turn of many in Bread and Roses on the eve of the election, joining hands with rightists in Groundwork and Socialist Majority Caucus to allow LA to maintain their endorsement, bears watching as well. B&R is proud and jealous of its role as “kingmaker”, and it is incumbent upon the Left in DSA to break this trend by shoring up our bench at convention next August. To this end, and because of our growing strength, Liberation will be running 3 of our cadres (Chris W. - STL, David S. - Omaha, Isa S. - SF) as candidates for the 2027-2029 NPC term.
In the Bay Area, victories and heavy lessons alike fall upon us. While a number of local electeds managed to win their seats running openly as socialists and DSA members, others lost out to more establishment liberals showing that numbers in door knocking and canvassing aren't always the game changers we hope they will be when coming up against heavily financed politically entrenched lackeys. While progressive measures such as the Regional Transit Measure passed, showing local support for public infrastructure benefiting the masses who need it most, other working class measures in favor of rent control were defeated, despite a consistent effort to raise public awareness and turnout residents impacted to vote in favor. What this says about the subjects addressed in these campaigns and how the local electorate are reached out to for driving support is a lesson to our organizers on where our effort is best placed and how our strategies must develop.
Despite the facade of progress given to California by the conservative far-right, basic analysis shows that the neoliberalism which plagues the state continues to rot it structurally. The California Democratic Party at the forefront of the establishment's offensive against working class power. Maybe, our approach towards electoral efforts will have to be adjusted based on lessons from successful campaigns. Maybe, the workers who need to be mobilized the most are those who keep or are kept away from the ballot boxes all together. Regardless, we are members of DSA because we believe in a broad multi-approach strategy, not simply hibernating until election season.
Texas
Harlynn R., At-Large (Austin Area)
The shift to Blexas as dramatically as it happened signifies a good handful of things. That Greg Abbott and Ken Paxton were thrown out by a collective margin of nearly two million votes is a response to 30 years of reactionary dictatorship in this state. The Republican coalition among Latine Texans has also demonstrably evaporated, in no small part directly because of the ethnic cleansing in our Latine communities by ICE. Multiple women, LGBTQ folks, and people of color have seized major offices, and this is a shift which exposes the ludicrous narrative of a culture war, a distraction created by the Confederacy-loving fascist Pat Buchanan to erase class entirely from political discourse.
But we must not avoid confronting contradictions. Talafreako still supports a two-state solution, makes the meaningless distinction between defensive and offensive arms to Israel, and identifies as a “border security democrat”, and he must be held to account for that, along with his floundering on trans issues. Gina Hinojosa’s family is a political dynasty here, and that carries with it an inevitable reckoning with establishment — that is, bourgeois — interests. The Texas Democrats are not a left party, nor will they ever be, no matter the posturing with counterfeit populism or underdelivered progressivist promises. DSA and other legitimately left-wing formations must push beyond their fidelity to Democratic Party politics as Texas Democrats re-entrench themselves in moneyed interests’ grip lest we get drunk on temporary gains.
Illinois
Rah, Chicago DSA, ISWG Co-Chair
The 2026 midterms have shown us a massive shift in political alignment with significant gains for the Democratic Party. Despite Illinois being considered a safe blue state, this realignment has affected our electoral map as well. Progressive Democrat and DSA backed candidates in rural and suburban regions have flipped Republican and reactionary Democrats' seats, running on a progressive liberal agenda of “affordability”. Despite this newfound success of “affordability” economic populism, the Illinois legislature has historically been comprised of a super majority of Democrats, which has had its own set of contradictions the Left here continues to struggle with. While the general politics of Illinois Democrats are “progressive” compared to national politics, the Democratic party has historically been one of machine politics, since long before the days of Boss Daley's reign in Chicago. Recently, that old school machine politics has been taken over by corporate pacs and super pacs funded by billionaires, whose candidates fill city council and state legislature positions. There has been no solution to this contradiction from the Democrats, since they would rather be co-opted by the most evil of corporations than lose their seat to a challenger.
DSA’s city, suburban and rural chapters in Illinois have found limited success in local state, city and school board elections against a Illinois legislature that has been ruled by the democrats with a supermajority in the state legislature and city council for the last 20 years. Despite this limited success of socialists in office, it marks a historic moment where DSA chapters in the state can agitate to have more influence in the state's local politics outside of the democratic machine. There has also been success with ballot initiatives in Illinois that point to people’s perception of taxing billionaires, banning data centers and expanding health care to be a priority and from exit polls has a favorable view of democratic socialism (ballotpedia & Jacobin) .
With Chicago being one of the country’s major economic, political and cultural capital of the country, where the socialist movement began and spread throughout the world, the home of the Haymarket Rebellion and the Black Panther Party’s Rainbow Coalition, DSA chapters in Illinois have a responsibility to the socialist movement across the country and in Chicago to grow the movement. This means increasing socialist control of state and local offices and also continuing the work outside of electoralism by building within the working class communities of the state’s rural and urban areas. Continuing to build this dual power is necessary in order to hold our socialists in office accountable to the movement and to build the structure necessary for the liberation of all workers.
Missouri
Chris W, Saint Louis DSA (Polied Co-Chair, National AFROSOC chair)
MO-2 saw a flip from R to D, with ultra-reactionary Ann Wagner losing to progressive (non-DSA) liberal, Fred Wellman. We also saw the reactionaries’ attack on reproductive and gender affirming healthcare in the form of Amendment 3 defeated handily. AIPAC shill Wesley Bell was re-elected in MO-1, after defeating DSA endorsed Cori Bush in the August primary. The Republican supermajority in the state legislature was crushed, with 16 seats flipping to the Democrats. Finally, Proposition A was defeated, which would have enabled further Republican gerrymandering at the behest of Trump and rigged up a new Congressional seat for their party by carving up Emmanuel Cleaver’s district in Kansas City. Missouri voters, obviously, are tired of Republicans trying to rig the rules to overturn the people’s expressed will at the polls. It remains the responsibility of Missouri DSA chapters to continue to build out a strong movement that can continue to conquer the power on the ground to hold politicians accountable and extract gains from within and without the halls of bourgeois power.
Nevertheless, the midterm elections have emphasized the class character of the Democrats as a bourgeois party, and the contradictions that emerge from it. Recent statements and behavior by Hakeem Jeffries and Chuck Schumer have highlighted that they are Zionists and neoliberals, not servants of the people. Jeffries and his neoliberal clique have cynically weaponized his Blackness to try and guilt him into the seat — this has not fooled the masses. There is currently a million+ strong petition against Jeffries, and even Democrats from red states who are not DSA members have come out in opposition. AOC, who DSA’s Mensheviks continue to boost for President in an unserious and unstrategic way, is on record as supporting Jeffries. This contradiction, like all others on this matter, must continue to be highlighted and struggled over at both the chapter and national level. As we approach our DSA National Convention in 2027, our task is to educate comrades who are on the fence, and continue to build up support on the Left and mobilize its allies to carry forth the struggle towards revolution. See you there.
