Trump humbled as the radical left rides the blue tsunami

Democrats have seized both houses of Congress in a crushing rebuke to Trump. The bigger story for the left is that unashamed socialists and progressives won – and won big.

Donald Trump spent the final weeks of the US midterm election campaign begging Americans to vote as though he were on the ballot. They took him at his word.

In a night of crushing defeats for the president, Democrats seized control of both the Senate and the House of Representatives. His handpicked Maga candidates were swept away in what The Guardian called a “blue tsunami”.

By Wednesday afternoon, Democrats had won 54 Senate seats to the Republicans’ 44, flipping seven Republican-held seats in Kansas, Iowa, Texas, Ohio, Maine, North Carolina and South Carolina. Kansas now has its first Democratic senator in 94 years. In the House, Democrats had already won 228 seats and were on course for more than 250 – their strongest position since 1990.

Trump is the first president in 20 years to lose both chambers of Congress in a midterm. He now faces his final two years as a lame duck.

The verdict was about his broken promises, his economic failures and a war with Iran that has sent fuel prices soaring while American families struggle to put food on the table. But it was also a rejection of the racism that has defined Trump and his movement and of his brutal treatment of migrants.

It was a night of history, too. In Georgia, Keisha Lance Bottoms became the first black woman ever elected governor of a US state. In Michigan, voters elected the country’s first Muslim senator. These results should give confidence to progressives everywhere.

Michigan shows the way

Nowhere matters more for the left than Michigan. Abdul El-Sayed, a progressive Democrat, physician and former Detroit health director, beat Republican Mike Rogers to take the state’s open Senate seat. When he is sworn in in January, he will become the first Muslim to sit in the US Senate. “Michigan, we did it,” he told cheering supporters in the early hours.

He won despite one of the most disgraceful campaigns of smears in recent memory. A week before polling day, Trump branded him a “Jihadist Member of the Muslim Brotherhood”. Rogers tried to tie him to the same group, a tactic many Democrats and local religious leaders condemned as anti-Muslim.

Some of the attacks came from his own side. Haley Stevens, the pro-Israel centrist congresswoman El-Sayed narrowly beat for the Democratic nomination, first said she would back the party ticket. In the closing days of the race, she endorsed Rogers instead.

New York mayor Zohran Mamdani did not mince his words. “Haley Stevens just betrayed working-class people by endorsing the very Republican she said she wanted to run against,” he said.

The money was stacked against El-Sayed from the start. A group affiliated with the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (Aipac) spent more than $30m backing Stevens in the primary, some of it on ads attacking El-Sayed. Pro-Israel groups spent millions more across the country opposing left-wing Democrats – by some estimates more than $200m in all. In the general election, Rogers and his allies outspent El-Sayed by roughly three to two.

Before polling day, the progressive US outlet The Intercept argued that El-Sayed’s fate would decide whether the Democrats’ left flank was on the rise or whether the party would fall back on its “revanchist centrist instinct”. Plenty in the establishment, including centrist Democrats, were quietly hoping he would lose. A defeat would have let them claim, once again, that socialist policies cannot win.

Instead, El-Sayed showed that a determined, unashamedly radical campaign is popular – in a swing state that Trump carried just two years ago. He fought on affordability, on Medicare for All and on questioning US support for Israel. “We all know that my name and my faith aren’t the reason you can’t afford your gas,” he said. He called the Republican campaign against him the “ugliest we’ve seen in our lifetimes”.

Working-class lives were on the ballot on Tuesday in Michigan. Their healthcare, their rent, their bills. Voters chose the candidate who talked about them.

In the US midterm elections, New York gained more socialist representatives than it has ever had in its history.

Socialism on the ballot

El-Sayed was not alone. The Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) says more than 50 of its candidates won their races. “Workers deserve more and a reality where all of us live with dignity and hope is closer than we think,” the organisation posted. “The next generation is tired of waiting for trickle-down economics that don’t trickle down.”

DSA member Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez cruised to re-election in New York’s 14th congressional district, taking nearly 80% of the vote against Republican Diamant Hysenaj. In August she rejoined the DSA after letting her membership lapse for seven years, fuelling speculation about a run for president in 2028.

The influence of Mamdani is hard to miss. His mayoral win in New York showed a generation of candidates that you can run as a socialist, talk about the cost of living and win. Across the country, a record number of candidates committed to progressive policies have now done the same.

The end of the Trump era?

These midterms may come to be seen as the end of the Trump era. Control of the Senate gives Democrats the power to block many of his judicial and cabinet appointments.

Control of the House brings subpoena powers and Democrats have made clear they intend to use them. Robert Garcia, the Democrat in line to chair the House oversight committee, has promised swift investigations into the Trump family’s business dealings and into the Epstein files. Democratic leaders say the president’s enrichment of himself and his family amounts to corruption.

The consequences for Trump’s final two years – and for the US and the world – could be enormous.

Keep the pressure on

History tells us the Democratic establishment will not want to do anything that upsets the status quo. But it has a problem. Its new majorities include more committed progressives and socialists than ever before and they owe their seats to voters who wanted change, not caution.

The siren voices who insisted radical policies were unpopular have been proved wrong. The task now is for progressive and socialist Democrats to keep making the case for the politics that won on Tuesday – and to build the momentum that ensures the party’s next presidential nominee is someone prepared to take on the establishment.

There is a lesson here for the left in Britain, too. Take on the right without apology, talk about people’s bills and their rent and voters will listen.

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