Trump secures victory, controls both chambers of the legislature. The end of neoliberalism heralds the rise of fascism.

By Taki Manolakos

Citizens of the United States cast their ballots on Tuesday November 5th. We elected a President, Congressmen, Senators, and voted for state offices and ballot initiatives across the country. Focusing on the presidential race, Donald Trump secured a second term. The President is elected according to a system known as the Electoral College, where each state is allotted a certain number of votes based mainly on population; 270 votes are needed to win the Electoral College and Trump won 312 while Harris earned 226. The election came down to a handful of so-called battleground states, particularly Minnesota, Michigan, Pennsylvania, North Carolina, and Georgia. Trump won Pennsylvania with 50.5% and the margins were small in the other battleground states too. These small margins were consistent with pre-election polling, which have been indicating a close race for weeks.

The Republican Party also won control of the Senate, which is the upper chamber: they hold 53 out of 100 seats, picking up four in this election. The Senate is important because it has constitutional authority to appoint federal judges, including Supreme Court Justices, and military officers. A significant swath of the judiciary was appointed by Trump during his first term and approved by the Senate and this trend will now certainly continue. It can be noted that one of the cases against Trump in the state of Florida was adjudicated in his favor by a judge he had appointed. Indeed, now that he won a second term, the other cases will most probably be thrown out, although he did lose a defamation case against him. Additional cases include an election subversion charge in the state of Georgia. The lower chamber of the US Legislature, the House of Representatives, will also likely be controlled by the Republican Party; the House has the power to initiate revenue bills and impeach federal officials. The Republicans as of today control 214 seats as against the Democrats 203 (the final result was not available at the time of publication).

In the states and cities, many ballot initiatives of interest were held in this election. A ballot initiative is a procedure by which a specified number of voters may propose a statute, constitutional amendment, or ordinance, and compel a popular vote on its adoption. These are quite common in the United States, and a popular method for circumventing legislatures with direct democracy. In the current political climate, one important ballot initiative that has been put to the voters is the right to an abortion. The US Supreme Court had nullified the national right to an abortion in 2022, but ruled that the states may pass such measures. Constitutional amendments to protect or expand abortion rights passed in seven of the 10 states where they appeared on the ballot November 5th. It is an interesting contradiction that states that routinely elect right-wing legislatures have opted to support ballot initiatives enshrining the right to abortion in their respective constitutions (Kansas is a notable example from 2022). On the other hand, supposedly progressive Californians rejected a ballot initiative that would have prohibited involuntary servitude as punishment for crime. Where I live, in Missouri, the initiatives ranged from enshrining the right to an abortion in the state constitution to increasing the minimum wage and mandating that workers can receive paid sick leave. Both were approved and passed. The results of the voting for ballot initiatives illustrates that American society continues to be riddled with intense contradictions.

It is necessary at this juncture to dissect the campaigns that both parties pursued during the election. The essential question faced by the American ruling class today is what will replace neoliberalism, which has now decisively collapsed. Trump effectively proposed neo fascism as a solution. His entire campaign was guided by a deep animus against immigrants. To cite one example, during the presidential debate, Trump accused the Haitian population in Springfield Ohio of stealing the white population’s pet dogs and eating them. He consistently accused immigrants of being responsible for a national crime wave. The propaganda of immigrant demonization was intense throughout the campaign season. Trump also vowed to levy tariffs and use this source of monies as a way to finance the federal government, which was last done in the 19th century during the era of industrialization. He seems to believe that tariffs will reverse the decline of the manufacturing sector in the country. Importantly, he has vowed to use the state apparatus to eliminate “the enemy within” by which he means all his political opponents, ranging from prominent politicians like Nancy Pelosi to groups on the left of the Democrats.

The Democrats, on the other hand, did not offer much of an answer to this fundamental issue of what should replace neoliberalism. Politically, they attempted to paint Trump as a threat to democracy although they hesitated to call him a fascist. Harris proposed what she termed an Opportunity Economy, where everyone has the possibility to become a successful capitalist, but the details were very unclear. On the other hand, Harris defended the Zionists till the end, painting herself as a strong ally of Israel. This alienated a large section of the electorate since the polling has shown for months now that Americans sympathize with the plight of the Palestinians and want the genocide to end. A majority of both Harris (77%) and Trump (51%) voters say it is very or somewhat important that the United States demand an immediate ceasefire in Lebanon and Gaza. As demonstrated by the protest movements across college campuses calling for a ceasefire in Gaza, 66% of 18-29-year-olds said it was very important [to demand an immediate ceasefire]. In the crucial state of Michigan, one of the states that decided the final election outcome, and which has tens of thousands of Arab American voters, Bill Clinton campaigned for Harris by giving a speech making racist anti-Arab remarks. Michigan traditionally has been a Democrat stronghold with a large industrial working class (the city of Detroit is in Michigan), but deindustrialization has changed the political dynamic. The outcome was predictable, with such slim margins, Harris earned 48.3% while Trump won 49.7%.  A large portion of the Arab American community in Michigan voted for the Green Party. Finally, Harris defended the right of the American military to launch imperial adventures as and when it suited “national security interests”. In her speech at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago over the summer, she whole-heartedly praised the “lethality” of the US military. In the closing days of the race, she focused on recruiting so-called anti-Trump Republicans by appealing to their patriotism. This broad strategic orientation failed spectacularly.

Outside of the the Democratic and Republican parties, a vibrant alternative ecosystem exists, but continues to fail at moving the conversation beyond the binary defined by the political duopoly. Unfortunately, election law makes it very difficult for alternative political parties to qualify for ballot access. Additionally, the capitalist media ignores these alternatives and hence the vast majority of voters are simply not aware that these options exist. The alternative parties are not allowed to participate in the presidential debates. When the alternatives are mentioned in the media, generally speaking, they are viciously ridiculed. Despite these substantial challenges, there were three alternative parties participating in the election. Dr. Jill Stein of the Green Party was the largest alternative, followed by Claudia De La Cruz of the Party for Socialism and Liberation (PSL), and the Independent Professor Cornel West. All alternative parties condemned the Zionist genocide in Palestine in no uncertain terms, embraced progressive climate change policy, and generally agreed to common sense policies that would have improved the condition of the working class. Nevertheless, these parties only secured a small percentage of the total votes cast (less than 5%).

What is the significance of these election results? The key to understanding the election outcome, and the re-emergence of the Trump phenomenon, is to understand that the working class overall has abandoned the Democratic Party. The traditional alliance between labor unions and the Democrats dates back to the Great Depression and the reforms of President Franklin D. Roosevelt (popularly known as FDR). FDR passed legislation enshrining the right of trade unions to exist and endowing them with a set of rights as against the capitalist class as a whole. An entire institutional setup was created to govern relations between capital and labor, which were favorable to labor, in the form of the National Labor Review Board (NLRB). Since that time, the trade unions have slavishly obeyed party diktats, and that political arrangement continues to this day. Even relatively progressive trade unions like the United Electrical Workers (UE) and the International Longshore and Warehouse Workers (ILWU) endorsed Harris. This period of “class compromise” did not last very long, however.

Neoliberalism shifted the balance of class power towards the capitalist class. For instance, union density has been significantly eroded since the onset of neoliberalism. The share of US workers who belong to a union has fallen since 1983, when 20.1% were unionized. In 2023, 10% of US workers belonged to a union. This fact is part and parcel of the neoliberal project, which led to labor’s “flexibilization” and precarity. A considerable section of the working class now holds multiple jobs, lacks benefits such as a pension, and cannot afford basic necessities. The cost of housing has become a national political issue, with many workers spending up to 50% of their income towards housing costs in the major cities. Having children has become too expensive and a luxury. I documented in detail the conditions of the US working class under the Biden Administration in an article for Dollars and Sense magazine.  Many workers, who realize that the Democrats are key architects of the neoliberal order, have thus decided to support the Republicans. It helps that Trump fancies himself to be an anti-systemic politician.

The Financial Crisis of 2008 and the COVID pandemic have forced the neoliberal order into terminal decline. Social movements like Occupy Wall Street and Black Lives Matter have accelerated this decline. Occupy Wall Street specifically led to an objective increase in class consciousness and a rediscovery of the vocabulary and practice of class struggle. In contrast, the utility of the Black Lives Matter movement was in its education and enlightenment of the masses of white youth regarding institutionalized racism and police terror in America, something that did not happen during the Civil Rights movement of the 1960s. The entire Trump phenomenon is therefore a response to this predicament – fascism is always at the ready under capitalism to assert itself in order to reproduce the capitalist order, whenever it becomes necessary. But we will have to wait and see how far Trump can push his neo fascist political agenda. There is little doubt that he will pardon his friends and political allies in the first 100 days of his administration. There is also little doubt that he will round up and deport thousands of immigrants. You will soon also be hearing of arrests of activists and intellectuals, with a re-emergence of McCarthyite tendencies in the United States. How far this will go remains to be seen. Whether he will be able to fully implement a neo fascist agenda depends on the possibility of organized mass mobilizations and resistance. If and only if a new American revolutionary common sense is constructed, and pursued to its logical conclusion, by the masses will the threat be defeated.