Change is in the air.
KapitálThe US elections brought the Democratic Party a series of victories across the country. Economic populism, opposition to wars, and an emphasis on affordability strengthened the progressive wing. Can the party seize this opportunity for fundamental change, or will its own leadership hold it back once again?
Counting all the votes and verifying the results will take several more weeks. It is already clear, however, that 2026 brought a tsunami of Democratic Party victories across the United States. People despised by the party’s corporate establishment also succeeded. The elections were not only about Trump and his regime, which suppresses any dissent. They were also about Israel, cryptocurrencies, data centers, and wars in the broader sense. And above all, the affordability of everyday life.
Populism in the best sense of the word
Two issues propelled the progressive left to major victories across the country and at all levels of legislative and executive power: economic populism (in the original meaning of the word, not as an insult, which is what Slovak politics has reduced it to) and rejection of the Israeli genocide.
Abdul El-Sayed in Michigan and Troy Jackson in Maine won seats in the U.S. Senate thanks to uncompromisingly progressive campaigns built on human rights. They stood up to the Democratic Party’s corporate politics and won over voters with a platform that addresses people’s everyday concerns.
Five people from the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) won seats in the House of Representatives. (The DSA is the largest socialist organization in the USA. It is not an independent party, and its members—both men and women—usually run for office as Democrats.) They first had to win exceptionally tough primaries, that is, internal party elections in which it is decided who will represent the party. One of the candidates, Angela Gonzalez-Torres, defeated incumbent California congressman Jimmy Gomez in the general election. And after New York, which has been led by Zohran Mamdani since the beginning of the year, Los Angeles also has a DSA member at its helm. Nithya Raman became mayor, displacing Karen Bass, a longtime favorite of the older generation of the progressive left.
A new order in Washington
The Democratic Party won a majority in both the House of Representatives and the Senate. Its representatives who oppose war and put people first now carry considerable weight within the Democratic majority in the House. I expect intra-party negotiations to look completely different than they did under Biden, when only a small group around Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (AOC) challenged the party’s corporate wing.
Some commentators predict that Trump will simply veto everything the Democratic majority approves. Such a prediction, however, stems from a profound misunderstanding of what actually drives Trump. Trump is not George W. Bush, who was driven by ideology. Trump has an almost desperate need to be popular and celebrated. Take Medicare, for example, public health insurance for people aged 65 and over. If the Democratic majority lowered that threshold to 50, it is not inconceivable that Trump would sign the bill. His unpredictability is an opportunity for the Democratic Party. Even his unusually mild tone toward the Democratic Party after the election may suggest that the next two years will unfold differently than expected.
Florida on the threshold of change
Election night also reminded us that those who make decisions in the Democratic Party would still rather lose than let an uncompromisingly progressive figure into the top ranks. The party did not invest a single cent in the closely watched race for Florida’s Senate seat, which turned Angie Nixon into a national star. Nixon ran a passionate campaign on a small budget and narrowly lost to the Republican Party representative defending the seat. Even a modest investment by the party leadership could have changed the course of history.
Darlings of the pro-Israel lobby Debbie Wasserman Schultz and Jared Moskowitz won comfortably, despite going through heated primaries and redistricting in the middle of the electoral term. (Districts in the USA are usually redrawn once every ten years after the census. This time, however, several states did so early in order to gain a political advantage.) They will continue to influence the Democratic Party’s official foreign-policy agenda, and not for the better. Both will probably retain their seats on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, especially if the Democratic caucus elects Hakeem Jeffries, its current leader, as Speaker of the House.
Their kind of politics, however, is already on its way out. Public opinion has shifted dramatically. The reason is the genocide Israel continues to perpetrate against the Palestinian people, as well as its ethnocentric supremacism and apartheid. At the same time, the political influence of the boomer generation is waning. The American public has had enough of funding Israel and military adventures around the world, while people at home can barely pay for housing and healthcare. Today, they connect their hardships not only with corporate greed, but also with money wasted on the military. I hope that the approaching presidential primaries and the 2028 elections will decisively turn U.S. foreign policy away from its imperialist, hegemonic tradition.
To the left or off the road
The Democratic Party did not dominate only in federal elections. In my second home, Arizona, it took control of both chambers of the state legislature and the governorship for the first time in 60 years, and won every statewide elected office. It also gained a so-called trifecta—that is, the governorship and a majority in both legislative chambers simultaneously—in Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, and Nevada. Texas rewrote history: Gina Hinojosa became governor, James Talarico entered the U.S. Senate, the party won a majority in the state House, and it also recorded important victories in races for lower offices.
The Democratic Party also won in districts that had been considered unwinnable. Not because it catered to conservative values, but because it fully embraced economic populism and class struggle against billionaires. Fighting for “Main Street,” meaning ordinary people and small businesses, rather than Wall Street, is now considered a moderate position.
Much of this reminds me of 2006, when George W. Bush and Dick Cheney’s war in Iraq, the disastrous mishandling of Hurricane Katrina, and the looming financial collapse brought the Democratic Party a majority in Congress. But one thing is different today. In 2006, the party won thanks to economically conservative candidates with no desire for fundamental change. Instead of universal public healthcare, we got Obamacare healthcare reform, which continues to favor private insurers. Instead of genuine Wall Street reform in the spirit of Roosevelt’s New Deal, we got a financial regulation law that did not affect banks “too big to fail” and largely left them free to gamble. This year’s elections sent many new faces to Congress, such as James Talarico, who, at least rhetorically, led a frontal campaign in deeply Republican (“red”) Texas against oligarchs, tech giants, and Musk. Space is opening up for an extensive legislative agenda that could genuinely help people.
A bolder future
Looking at the Democratic Party from the inside only feeds my Eastern European cynicism. And yet I, too, feel that something entirely new is happening in American politics. Just six years ago, supporting the liberation of Palestine, diplomacy instead of militarism, fundamental change to immigration policy, and a strong economic security agenda put a campaign on the rebellious fringe. I ran for Congress on such a platform in 2020. Today, these positions are standard pillars of many campaigns. They formed the basis not only of DSA-backed candidacies in safely Democratic districts, but also of several successful candidacies by people with more traditional political backgrounds in Republican districts, from the highest offices to the lowest.
It is not only the rhetoric that has changed. There is also growing awareness that the Democratic Party must seize the opportunity, push through legislation decisively, and undertake ambitious reforms that will noticeably improve people’s lives. The excuse that “now is not the right time” no longer holds up even in the eyes of the party’s most loyal core.
Generational change has been underway for some time, but it was only the destructive policies of Trump’s regime that shifted the Overton window, meaning the boundaries of what the public considers politically acceptable and achievable. In this election, young voters came to the polls in numbers we have not seen since the days of Obama, bringing a bolder political generation into office at every level. Change is in the air.