This is the text of a presentation given by Speak Out Socialists on October 21, 2026
Elections are a chance to talk about what’s going on and what it will take to change things. And this election can tell us a lot.
First, the amount of money pouring into the elections by the super-rich shows us how the ruling class sees elections. Every election breaks record on the cost of the election. There is no way to run an election without the support of billionaires.
This one is no different, with spending projected to be over $11.6 billion just on ads alone by election day, the most in U.S. history, most of which is coming from the super rich.
Elon Musk has already spent over $366 million of his own money, mostly on ads, but also to pay canvassers to go door to door trying to influence voters to vote for far-right Republicans. The top 50 individual donors have poured more than $2.3 billion into midterms.
But that’s just the money that can be seen. There’s a whole category of Dark money, which has no public record and is used by the very wealthy to influence elections.
This year, public records show billionaires favoring republicans in their donations, by about 2 to 1. But total campaign spending between the two parties is about the same.
Billionaires have also poured money into different state ballot measures, trying to block those that would raise their taxes to fund social services, and trying to pass ones that benefit their interests.
One example from California: is Proposition 40, the so-called billionaires tax. It would impose a one-time tax of up to 5% on California residents with at least $1 billion in net worth. A billionaire worth exactly $1 billion would owe about $50 million. If California’s roughly 250 billionaire were taxed it would raise about $100 billion.
If so, that would cover the anticipated $30B loss of all of the funding being cut from the Trump administration’s Medicaid cut coming through in January. And it would leave more left over to help fund education and transportation. It wouldn’t cover everything, but it would certainly help, assuming it was used for these things.
But the billionaires have poured over $200 million dollars into blocking it. They have paid for relentless ads against it, invented risks that don’t exist. And they even paid for two counter-ballots 41 and 42 that if either of them passes, it will cancel prop 40, even if it prop. 40 passes. And most voters are even aware of this.
And California’s Democratic Governor Gavin Newson has gone along with the billionaires and endorsed prop. 42, which is getting constant ad circulation, and could be the thing that blocks the billionaire tax from going through.
It’s not as if this billionaire tax will have changed everything. But it is better than nothing and a small way to reduce some of the huge cuts coming down. But it just shows how the billionaires and politicians use the elections to protect their interests. They know if this were to pass it could set a precedent that other states could follow.
To the ruling class, democracy just means the freedom to spend their wealth to get the outcomes they want, whether it’s on candidates or ballot measures. Their version of Democracy under capitalism is very limited. Different sections the ruling class may favor Republicans or Democrats in different elections, but either way, they know that both parties will defend their interests.
The Trump agenda
At the same time this election highlights the direction things are going under the Trump administration. The Trump administration can often seem like a chaotic circus of far-right idiots with competing interests. And it is.
But at the same time many big players connected to it share enough goals we can still sketch out a method to the madness.
Trump’s authoritarianism is also not an isolated phenomenon: authoritarian regimes are rising across the world, including in India, Iran, China, Russia, Hungary, Brazil, and Argentina, alongside right-wing gains in Western Europe.
As competition over markets and resources continues to intensify, so does the authoritarianism of the regimes contesting for power.
And the U.S. is facing a real economic challenger in China, and both Democrats and Republicans aim to resist China both economically and militarily. Much of this competition is tied to the race for AI supremacy and the energy, minerals, and computing power that growing industry requires.
With this backdrop, much of what the Trump administration does can seem less chaotic.
There is a massive military buildup to integrates AI technology into weapons and surveillance, and this is bringing the most far-right parts of the tech industry into direct partnership with the government, in preparation for growing conflicts over economic dominance and resources. To fund this, along with tax breaks for billionaires, the administration has launched a massive program of austerity, funding cuts to social services and programs for the working population.
Under Musk and DOGE, they laid off over 250,000 federal workers, and research, science, and aid programs were cut. About 7.5 million people will lose Medicaid in January, on top of deep cuts to food, housing, and health assistance. Tariffs and foreign aid have been used to rip up old alliances in favor of transactional relationships that put U.S. capital first. All the while, the administration has become one big blatant corruption scheme aimed at lining its own pockets.
In their eyes, they see the Democrats as too conventional, unwilling to take big risks, and okay with keeping things as they are, which has helped cause the U.S. decline in the first place.
While Trump administration is willing to rip things up, even when it seems to weaken the U.S. Regulations are just obstacles to be shredded, and any spending beyond policing, surveillance, the military, AI, and billionaire wealth transfers is a total waste and can be gutted. Their project to centralizing power in the executive branch, and accelerate authoritarianism.
They seek unchecked executive power. They have removed opponents, from generals to agency heads, and replaced them with loyalists, including in the FBI, CIA, and military. It has labeled left-wing activists and groups as domestic terrorists and prosecuted activists on that basis. They’ve used executive power to shape media mergers, police university curricula, and withhold science funding. DHS, ICE, and CBP are essential to terrorize and repress the population. They operate like a rogue agency with a massive budget and can go after anyone while terrorizing immigrants. Expanding there arrests and disappearing people and children to concentration camps or to countries they have no connection to (sending about 25,000 people to other countries). And they are expanding their immigrant camps.
And at the same time, they have been working for several years to give themselves greater power to intervene in elections and tilt them in their favor, and possibly block the results if things don’t go their way. And we have to take these efforts seriously.
Trump and the Republicans have lost support
Their support is much weaker. Trump got elected making a lot of promises, and he hasn’t delivered on any of them — from stopping wars and dealing with the cost of living increases to releasing the Epstein files.
And with the Iran war, rising prices, and their terrorization of immigrant workers and families, Trump and the Republicans are going into the midterms with weakened support. Some of the latest polls put Trump’s approval at around 33% down about 10-14 points since January 2025, with their disapproval numbers around 65%. Among Republican voters, approval has fallen from about 91% to about 73%.
Trump has also lost some of his most loyal former supporters. Marjorie Taylor Greene, and Tucker Carlson and many others have backed away from Trump for Iran and the Epstein files, and other policies. And many Republicans have distanced themselves from around the handling of Iran as well.
With the Iran war continuing and the economy declining, the cost of living is skyrocketing and the administration is increasingly getting blamed. The Republicans are really worried about completely losing control of Congress and even districts it has historically won.
Republican efforts to interfere in the elections
This is why they have prepared and have begun to interfere in the elections. The Trump administration is already working to disrupt the outcome in three main ways. It has moved to shift control of elections toward loyalists in different states, to suppress turnout, and give itself tools to contest results.
It’s not clear how far they will be willing to go in the end. But it is absolutely clear that they have worked tirelessly to give themselves the option to tilt the midterms in its favor and possibly try to block the results.
It has moved on several fronts at once.
It has tried to push through mass voter roll purges under the pretext of stopping noncitizen voters, which is not real a problem, and a sometimes happens with a handful ov registered voters, most who never vote. They tried to hand control of mail-in ballots Postal Service, run by a Trump loyalist. It has threatened to prosecute election officials who refuse to comply with Trump’s department of Justice. Trump-aligned election officials now sit in counties that will decide key races.
It has gutted the federal body that could settle disputed results of electronic voting machines. And now it is unclear how or who will be responsible if electronic votes are challenged. It has also used federal funding as leverage to push through voter roll purges. It has sent federal agents into county election offices to seize their records and arrest election officials. And Trump backed state governments have pushed to redraw their election maps to their own favor (the Democrats made their own countermoves to redraw electoral maps in their favor too).
The administration has already begin also using immigration enforcement as a tool of intimidation, deploying ICE in targeted districts to scare voters away from the polls. It has already demanded state voter lists, as it has from California, to begin building a case for voter fraud that can be used to challenge results after the election. Some Republican-led states, like Texas, have already imposed restrictions on mail voting in heavily Black and Latino counties. The goal here is to reduce overall turn out and producing longer lines on election day to suppress the number of votes.
The courts have blocked some of these efforts, but the administration keeps pressing forward showing a deep preoccupation about trying to reduce turnout and prepare themselves to challenge the results, There are about 30 House and 12 Senate races close enough to be swayed. It would be more surprising if they have done all of this preparation and just let the process unfold like normal.
Ultimately, the Democrats have nothing to offer
In the midst of all this, the Democrats are saying that if you want to stop Trump and protect the electoral process, the only thing to do is vote for them. And the news keeps reporting they expect a so-called blue wave. But support for Democrats is driven more by opposition to Trump than by enthusiasm for the party. Their approval is higher than Trumps but not that much — about 37%. If there is a “blue wave,” it will be a sign of anger at Trump, not necessarily a show of support for the Democrats.
This isn’t surprising. The Democrats have not been a brake on Trump’s policies.
They offer words of criticism but get little done. Most continue to support Israel’s genocide and have only tactical criticisms of the war on Iran. During the ICE resistance in Minneapolis, the Democratic mayor and governor ultimately worked to demobilize the protests and protect ICE officers.
Democrats speak about the cost of living because voters feel the squeeze, but have nothing to address it. They too help skyrocket the military spending. Bailed out banks while millions were losing their homes and jobs. Massively expanded US energy production as the climate crisis worsened. They helped build DHS, ICE, and the CBP into the rogue agencies it is today.
Of course Trump has expanded those even further, but the Democrats kept them growing the whole time. I’m not making the point that they one party with the exact same tactics. But overall they support the same system, the same goal of US dominance, even if they stand for different means of defending it.
But we have to be honest, the Democrats have not been a stop to the Trump administration. And even if they were elected, the Trump administration could continue the maneuvers it has used to bypass Congress through executive orders and emergency measures.
And if Trump were to veto every bill, the Democrats would need a 2/3 majority in both the House and the Senate to overturn a presidential veto, which they do not have a chance of winning even if their blue wave were to happen.
Again: the changes we need won’t come from the ballot box.
What about the Democratic Socialists of America and their Social Democratic Populism?
In the face of this we’ve seen some look to DSA and their Social Democratic Populism as an alternative, and another option to change things.
We’ve seen the successful election of many DSA-backed Democratic Party candidates. And this shows clearly that there is an opening in the population for a more populist message, one that speaks about issues the working class cares about. It shows there are many voters who are sick of both the policies of the traditional Democrats and the Republicans. Well see how they do in the midterms.
And this isn’t surprising: most people don’t like austerity, ICE terror, skyrocketing cost of living, wars on Iran, Israel’s genocide, community destroying data centers, mass surveillance, and so on. They want to see the billionaire’s wealth be used to fund social services.
These candidates have been able to campaign on these ideas and get elected despite way better funded opposition from the mainstream of the Democratic Party and Republicans.
But we’ve also seen the limits of relying on elections. And NY York Mayor Mamdani has shown this the clearest. He was elected running a very popular campaign, promising affordable housing, to free buses, smaller classes in K-12 schools, he’s an open critic of Israel’s genocide, promising no cooperation with ICE.
And he had every intention of trying to do all these things. But quickly we saw the limits of what a mayor can even do in pushing back against the priorities of this system, let alone in the financial capital of the U.S. He has not been able to carry through many of these campaign promises.
He can point to some victories, like free child care for about 2,000 two-year-olds. But even this was largely funded by the New York’s Governor in exchange for other cuts.There was $131 million settlement for underpaid DoorDash workers too.
But these came at the expense of other promises and budget cuts. He backed off the reduction in class sizes. He cut assistance to the unhoused while increasing homeless sweeps. He’s pretty much dropped the discussion around free buses and rent freezes. When Netanyahu came to town, of course he backed off his arrest.
He kept in office the controversial police commissioner Jessica Tisch. He promised to disband their special police unit dedicated to protests (the Strategic Response Group). But already that unit has been called out to arrest anti-Netanyahu protesters and striking nurses and anti-Ice protestors. He endorsed Governor Hochul and created a Business Advisory Council tying his administration to corporations, banks, and real estate developers.
So, far from building working-class power, his time in office shows the constraints of governing within the Democratic Party and the capitalist state, while really demobilizing the grass roots campaign that got him elected. The point is not to criticize him as a person, but just to show the real limits of elections and the reformist politics of DSA. Even as the mayor, Mamdani doesn’t have the power to go against the ruling class and their interests. The changes that even Mamdani campaigned on can’t from Mamdani — they have to come from the struggles of the working class of New York.
Our power doesn’t lie in the offices of mayors or governors or federal politicians or the president. Our power is in the fact that we are the majority, and the working class does the work to make their system run. It is only when we organize ourselves, and rely on our forces that we can change things.
It depends on us
The real power to change things has been shown in the streets, not in the ballot box or the halls of government. This could not have been clearer than in the Twin Cities in Minnesota this past winter.
Trump and ICE carried out their terror in a city with a Democratic mayor and a Democratic governor, and those officials did nothing to stop it. Worse, while offering words of support, they called on the police and National Guard to police the protesters and protect ICE agents.
What forced ICE to retreat was the working class of the city coming together to defend their neighbors: tracking ICE vehicles, confronting agents in the streets, and escalating into a mass strike under the banner “No Work, No School, No Shopping.”
The lesson is that when we organize from below and rely on our power as a class, we can stand up to ICE and all of the attacks. That lesson matters more than ever. If Trump and the Republicans try to block the election results, they will use every means at their disposal against the protests that follow. We have already seen what that looks like in Minneapolis, Los Angeles, Chicago, and Memphis: federal shock troops, a federalized National Guard sent into states with Democratic governors, military deployments meant to intimidate, open talk of the Insurrection Act, and killings in broad daylight.
If that happens, we can’t look to the Democrats to oppose it, denounce it, or sue. We need to be in the streets, building towards Minneapolis-style responses everywhere: mass days of action, no-work/no-school demonstrations, and strikes that shut down business as usual.
Of course, we cannot give up our right to vote or to speak out. But real democracy comes from our collective action, deciding what we want, rather than pleading with politicians.
What to expect around these elections
We can expect the Trump administration will continue to do everything from contest to block the election results. They may try to block the seating of the new congress in January. We will see.
But we have to be ready to respond no matter the results. If they try to block it, there will likely be mass protests in different cities. We have to be ready to talk with the people we know, our neighbors, coworkers, class mates. The response to something like this has the possibility to grow into something big.
And of course the administration will try to repress any protests and intimidate those who stand up. We could even see the possibility for more days of action like in Minneapolis, with No Work! No School! No Business as Usual in multiple cities. There could be the opportunities to take part in this through our workplaces or schools. And even if the results are upheld, and the Democrats control congress, it does not mean the attacks will stop.
The massive cuts to Medicaid are still coming, along with deeper austerity, which will have major impacts on local hospitals and communities across the country. ICE will not reduce its operations and terror to immigrant communities. They are still actively recruiting, building more concentration camps, and directing more of their efforts towards criminalizing protest and resistance. This is only going to continue.
Whatever happens, it is not the elected officials that are the force to stop the attacks It’s up to us, the organized power of working people to defend our communities and resist their attacks. And we have to keep getting ready, and be connected to as many people as we can to help them get organized. A lot is at stake. But we can be confident there is a growing opposition. A growing anger at the status quo. And that all can be channeled into building a real fight back. Not just to resist their attacks, but to keep pushing and keep organizing towards a better world.
