By Justin Akers Chacon

As the US heads into midterm elections, there are developing indicators that Trump and the Republican Party are set for a significant defeat, losing control of possibly both houses of Congress. And this is happening despite a heavy-handed and authoritarian attempt by Trump to restrict voting in different ways.

This is also happening amid rampant corruption, with, for instance, Trump promising to pay $5,000 to each US voter if the Republicans win, and amidst a campaign of state repression against anti-ICE activists and pro-Palestine activists designed to squash dissent. Trump’s approval rating has dropped as low recently in some polls as 32%, which is the fourth-lowest approval rating for a sitting president in history. 55% of voters believe that Trump’s policies have negatively impacted them directly.

Some sections of the Republican Party are openly breaking with Trump on policy matters, especially in highly contested elections in places like Florida, Iowa, Kentucky, Maine, Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Utah and Wisconsin. They are especially breaking with Trump on the war on Iran, tariffs, the “affordability crisis” and rising inflation across the board, and especially the cost of housing and fuel prices. The 2024 coalition that got Trump elected has cracked and eroded, with parts of his base that voted for him in larger numbers now breaking with him as we head into the midterms.

So, for instance, Trump’s approval rating among rural voters fell from 54% in June polling to 42% in August polling, while disapproval rose from 42% to 52%. Polls also show that a majority of white working-class voters no longer approve of Trump’s handling of the economy. Polls use the category of “white voters without college degrees” as a proxy for working-class voters. Major polls show disapproval ratings of 57% to 67% among this demographic. A third indicator is support among Latino voters, who voted for Trump in larger numbers in 2024. Support from the Latino community is also collapsing.

According to national polls over the last month, Democrats led Republicans amongst Latino likely voters by 35 percentage points, 64% to 29%. It’s also interesting that different polling sites and even online betting operations are all giving the Democrats a higher likelihood of a Democratic sweep. So, Kalshi, for instance, gives the Democrats a 62% likelihood of winning both houses of Congress. NBC News polling and other nonpartisan polling sites also give the Democrats about a 60% chance of winning both houses of Congress.

And so this is a general outlook in terms of polling. As the US heads into the elections, there’s also a lot of attention being paid to what Trump is doing and what he may do to try to impact the outcomes of the November election if they go against the Republican Party. Trump and the Republican Party are trying to restrict the vote in every way possible. But with rapidly declining support, especially within his own base, potential extralegal actions he may take to control, shape, or even reject election outcomes may only provoke mass opposition and resistance.

The Democratic Party and DSA

The declining support for the Trump regime, the right, and the Republican Party has nothing to do directly with the Democratic Party representing some kind of substantive alternative. In fact, the party is offering only symbolic gestures of opposition to Trump’s main policies. They are running a campaign of having Trump run against himself. While they sit on the sidelines without offering any real, tangible alternative, the only exception is the rise and surge of the Democratic Socialists within the Democratic Party. The DSA now comprises the left wing of the Democratic Party, a patently right-wing capitalist political party.

Especially since the election of Mamdani as mayor of New York, there’s been another increase in DSA membership. Estimates now range from 120,000 to 160,000 members. It’s important to recognize that most people who register as DSA members are effectively registering as DSA voters. They sign up online and then they vote. Perhaps as many as 5,000 members, maybe even more, are involved in political or organizing activity, the majority of which is organizing local and statewide electoral campaigns.

As of September 22, the DSA Election Tracker, which is tracking all elections in 2026, from primaries to the general election, DSA Election Tracker claims that 67 DSA members had won and 60 had lost so far. Sixty-four other races, including many of the biggest, will be decided in the next month at the election. DSA chapters are running 191 candidates of their own across the country, mostly in local elections, but also in statewide elections and in some federal elections. Additionally, they are endorsing another 100 or so Democrats running to their right. The national DSA organization has only endorsed 29 candidates,

At the same time, there is tremendous anticipation on the liberal and socialist reformist left that Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez will soon position herself to announce a run for president in 2028.

There are numerous indicators of this, including the fact that she has made a public break with her former “left-wing” politics, where she has distanced herself from statements like “defund the police,” “abolish ICE,” and others, saying that these were products of the pandemic, “woke 1.0”, and calling them “crazy times.” In reality, she is remaking herself and presenting herself as a responsible manager of the capitalist state. She and Bernie Sanders, as the power and money brokers of this wing of the Democratic Party, seek to discipline and temper the more left sections of the DSA, choosing whom to support based on the “reasonability” of their politics.

But there continues to be a leftward shift amidst the polarization in US society. A poll that came out recently, published in Time magazine reports that “43% of Americans have a positive view of socialism, the highest share since Gallup began tracking the measure in 2010.” The latest survey, conducted August 3 to 24 last month, found that socialism has gained ground over time as several “market-oriented” economic concepts have lost favor. Socialism now ranks ahead of big business in the United States, which has fallen to a positive rating of 35% from a peak of 58% in 2012.

So the rise of the DSA left within the capitalist Democratic Party and a growing pro-socialist orientation among many working-class Democratic Party voters has led some factions within the party to declare war on the DSA and socialism instead of fighting against the right, with the goal of driving the DSA and socialist politics from the party. For example, the right-wing Democratic think tank “Third Way” has pledged $15 million from the November elections all the way to the general election of 2028 to counter and discredit the DSA movement.

So, basically, a wing of the Democratic Party is now running against its own left wing. Eight Democratic members of the House of Representatives recently voted with Republicans to adopt a resolution that formally denounces socialism and the Democratic Socialists of America. And in the US right now, Trump and the far right within his regime and across the MAGA base are ratcheting up rhetoric against the DSA and socialism, of course. Anti-socialism and anti-communism is a permanent and fixed characteristic of US politics historically, pulled out and weaponized especially when social discontent and class polarization intensifies.

Anti-socialist/anti-communist rhetoric is being voiced as a primary political objective as we head into the elections. Trump recently declared the DSA to be “the biggest threat to the United States. A bigger threat than any war, including 9/11.” And then he went to meet Mamdani at Gracie Mansion in New York City. So there are some glaring contradictions there.

Iran war and US imperialism

Overall, 74% of US voters say they oppose Trump’s war on Iran. That’s 97% of Democrats and 82% of independents. Much of the recent drop in support comes from Republicans. In March of this year, 73% of Republicans approved the way Trump was handling it. Now, that figure has dropped to 60%, with 40 percent now opposed to the war. 76% overall say the war was a mistake. The debacle of the Iran war is causing significant political repercussions in US Politics. There’s a growing recognition that it has weakened the empire and driven a wedge between the US and its Gulf allies.

It has given confidence to the Yemeni Houthis to go on a so far successful campaign against Saudi Arabia and its Yemeni proxies. The US has apparently had its hands tied on the Saudi question, in part because Trump is afraid of further defeat and embarrassment if it restarts attacks on Iran or is drawn into the Yemeni struggle directly, resulting in further counterattacks and restrictions on the movement of oil, especially through the Strait of Hormuz and Bab al-Mandab Strait.

There are military considerations, such as a significant reduction in interceptor missiles available, low troop morale, and of course, mass opposition at home. That limits US options. The US defeat and retreat has created a vacuum, increasing the influence of and global role of China and a military vacuum attempting to be filled, for example, by the Mecca Joint Defense Agreement which unites Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and Pakistan in a mutual defense agreement. These regional capitalist powers are scrambling to create new defense agreements and move away from the sole reliance on the US imperialist military umbrella.

The setbacks in the Middle East have not stopped the Empire from trudging on in other parts, especially Latin America, where it has continued a war on Cuba, has asserted control over Venezuela and its oil, and is shoring up political and military alliances with far-right regimes across the region. This is continuing under implementation of the “Trump doctrine”, which sees the building up of these alliances to fight “narco-terrorism” as a pretext for fighting future wars of aggression in the region and to ultimately repress potential uprisings and revolutionary movements of the future.

There continues to be a low level of active antiwar protest to match this opposition, unfortunately. So there is a contradiction, a gap between sentiment against the war and its manifestation in an antiwar movement.

Socialist Horizon and the United Left Platform

In this context, Socialist Horizon has grown over the last year. We are an activist socialist organization trying openly and confidently to rebuild a revolutionary socialist movement in the general shift left, within the polarization. We’re trying, along with our comrades in the United Left Platform, to project a confident revolutionary socialist pole for workers and students looking and moving left.

There are significant political openings for the revolutionary socialist left to step in, help lead, and grow significantly. If we lead confidently with our politics, we demonstrate the capacity to lead class struggles in proportion to our size and interventions where we are organized.

This is the direction Socialist Horizon is trying to take in the United Left Platform, recognizing that even at this point the revolutionary left can work above and out of proportion to our size, have influence, and relate to larger numbers of people. We expect and hope these possibilities will increase in the coming period.