By Jeff Mackler
No doubt capitalist-engineered U.S. elections sometimes have unexpected results as with the spontaneous mass mobilizations that shook France a few weeks ago and quickly spread across eight European nations. The unprecedented mass outpourings reflected society’s deep revulsion at the capitalist status quo, characterized by the ruling rich everywhere aiming to resolve their interrelated crises at the expense of working people.
Largely the same Democratic Party voters who in 2024 overwhelmingly rejected “Genocide Joe Biden” and “Killer Kamala” Harris’ slaughter in Palestine did the same to President Donald Trump in the 2026 U.S. midterm elections. The same voters, if not more, who rejected the Democrat’s proposed anti-immigrant legislation implemented under “Deporter-in Chief” Barack Obama did the same with Biden-Harris, who in 2024 aimed to win votes by outdoing Trump’s reactionary ICE policies. Persecuting the nation’s most oppressed and exploited immigrant communities, totaling some 11 million people, was the Democrat’s 2024 projected plan for electoral success. Trump’s plan today, to victimize the Latinex population similarly backfired with a massive voter outpouring across the country drowning previous Republican-held states.
As we go to press the 2026 midterm election results have registered a catastrophic defeat – a “tsunami” according to all major media outlets, to Trump’s policies, but also, indirectly, to the twin party’s imperialist wars, deepening global warming, fossil fuel-induced environmental destruction, degradation of women, Black, Latinex and LGBTQI+ rights, and the generalized assault on the affordability of life’s essentials.
Unprecedented annual military spending to the tune $1.5 trillion on the formal military budget alone, plus an additional $2 trillion more spent on the dozen other U.S. agencies that receive taxpayers dollars for war and war-related ventures, make the super rich richer than ever. Today’s unprovoked Iran War, that daily reigns death and destruction on the courageous and resisting Iranian masses, is nothing less than yet another U.S. oil war, this time overwhelmingly rejected by working people at the polls. If there ever was a vote against imperialist war, this was it!
The world’s largest oil companies, for whom war is always good for profits, reported unmatched gains over the last three months. ExxonMobil, Chevron, TotalEnergies, BP and Shell together collected $56.3 billion – more than double the same time last year.
Artificial Intelligence threatens millions of jobs
And now, Artificial Intelligence (A.I.) threatens as never before to rob countless millions of their jobs as ever-deepening and generalized inter-imperialist rivalry and declining profit rates compel the superrich to replace working people with super machines that house the mushrooming and massive Data Centers, at a cost of $1 billion each.
Voting on Imperialist War in Iran
None of the major media attributed the massive voter shift to any fundamental policy changes of the Democrats. Indeed, only a literal handful of the so-called DSA (Democratic Socialists of America) were on the ballot among the thousands of local, state and national positions contested. The Democratic Party tops made sure to pose themselves as “centrists” – on the Iran War, meekly suggesting, unsuccessfully, over the past year or so, that congress might be afforded the right to vote on the war rather than rejecting this U.S. atrocity outright.
With U.S. Senate vote counts formally certified in all but two states, Mississippi and Alaska, the Democrats have dramatically flipped the Senate by record margins. At least 7 contested Republican Senate seats are now controlled the Democrats, who now lead this 100-person ruling class institution, 54-44 with the two outstanding states above, both leaning toward the Democrats, still too close to call.
At least thirty-three seats were flipped in the House, with the Democrats today controlling some 65 percent of 435 House seats, a majority not seen in decades.
And all this in the face of Republicans especially – with the Democrats close behind – breaking all records in mid-term election spending, not to mention Trump early on threatening to send virtual armies to several states to “oversee” voting, if not arrest spuriously claimed “illegal voters” and/or confiscate “illegal ballots.”
The Fraud of U.S. Elections
In truth, U.S. elections are in the exclusive purview of the elite few, who control most every aspect of this rigged process, from the selection and financing of the candidates, to the corporate media dominating the political content, to the counting of the ballots. I might add here that beyond these technicalities, U.S. elections change little or nothing in the way the system actually works. The fundamental laws, the tax and financing systems, and all legislation are overseen by the corporate elite, regardless of which capitalist/imperialist party prevails on Election Day.
Trump’s early threats to intervene to change the expected results soon disappeared as the results trickled in over the course of the evening. He initially threatened, should he lose, to veto all legislation that the Democrats might propose. But as the electoral tsunami unfolded he shifted his tone toward being amenable to making various deals to govern in collaboration with victorious Democrats.
The obliging top Democratic Party leaders, like the Progressive Democrat Caucus leader Pramila Jayapal from Washington, D.C., and the likely new House Majority Speaker, Hakeem Jeffries, both indicted that conciliation with Trump rather than impeachment or confrontation was their orientation.
Massive Data Center Investments Mask GDP Figures
Touting his economic achievements a few days before the election to hopefully boost the Republican turnout, Trump quoted the government’s just published Bureau of Economic Analysis figures that the third quarter Gross Domestic Product (G.D.P.) grew by a hefty 3.4 percent, the fastest pace in a year. But Trump neglected to mention that at least half of this figure was due to unprecedented $billions invested by the nation’s leading corporate behemoths in building data centers and related infrastructure equipment, with $trillions more planned by 2030.
The NYT reported that, “Investment in data center equipment alone grew at an astonishing 20.9 percent annual rate in the third quarter, and overall business investment grew at a 12.7 percent annual rate, accounting for more than half of G.D.P. growth.” [Emphasis in italics added.]
The Times added… “These numbers, are somewhat misleading, because many of the computer chips and other parts used in data centers are produced overseas, and therefore aren’t considered part of [GDP] domestic output. Imports grew at a nearly 20 percent rate in the third quarter, in large part because of shipments of computer equipment.”
An Oct. 29, 2026 NYT article entitled, “Big Tech’s Data Center Blitz Is Burning Through Cash and Scaring Wall St.” had the details.
“Four of the tech industry’s biggest companies set a spending record in the last quarter as they raced to build artificial intelligence, leading to a worrisome new milestone: Most of them are spending more cash on data centers than they get from running their businesses.
“Over the past two weeks, Amazon, Microsoft, Google and Meta said they were on track to spend more than $720 billion this year on data centers and other capital expenses — roughly triple what they spent just two years ago. And all are expected to spend even more next year. The investments are so large, the A.I. boom accounts for much of the resilience in the U.S. economy.”
A sell-off in tech stocks was registered a few days before the election. The Nasdaq dropped more than 2 percent in early trading, as investors responded to the massive A.I. speculative frenzy.
Google’s stock fell more than 12 percent, erasing its gains for the year. Meta’s shares fell 7 percent after its results showed it was using so much cash that the company was issuing new stock to raise funds.
A number of the companies are issuing new stock, selling bonds and taking out loans to support their spending. On Monday, November 2 Meta said it would raise up to $95 billion from selling stock to fund its A.I. ambitions. That same day, SpaceX said it had secured $40 billion in loans to secure specialized A.I. chips.
Truth About Data Centers
This unprecedented corporate spending flew in the face of massive public opposition to A.I., first and foremost due to its overt threat, already well underway, to replace untold numbers of workers with computer-generated “intelligence.” That A.I. technology also includes, the massive draining and pollution of the nation’s already threatened fresh water supplies, the major diminution of and increased cost of civilian electricity supplies and the use of this super technology for various nefarious purposes, from stealing, if not using deadly nuclear technology to looting public and private financial institutions.
All told the 2026 midterm election evidenced that the U.S. is far from the stable capitalist behemoth that its billionaire proponents aim to project. Its every horror is driven forward qualitative less by warmongering racist neo-fascist monsters like Donald Trump than it is by capitalism’s inherent and deadly contradiction – the subordination of human life itself to meet the needs of a cancerous social system based on the inherent need to dominate foreign and domestic markets and to extract profits from working people the world over.
The 2026 election provided a clear example of the road forward for working people and their allies among all the oppressed and exploited. Capitalism cannot be reformed. It must be replaced by a new society where the vast working class majority rule in their own name to promote their own interests and those of all humanity.
The staring point in the U.S. and worldwide is working people constructing their own political parties, independent and mass parties that operate in the social, political and economic arenas to advance their own interests, and not those of the minority capitalist exploiters.
Such an endeavor would include rebuilding and qualitatively expanding and democratizing the trade unions, today standing at a near historic low point in U.S. history, and constructing a fighting union-based Labor Party in alliance with all of society’s oppresses and exploited.
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