“Hide nothing from the masses of our people. Tell no lies. Expose lies whenever they are told. Mask no difficulties, mistakes, failures. Claim no easy victories..” – Amilcar Cabral

The media across the country has whipped the citizens into a frenzy regarding the results of the mid-term elections of November 3, 2026. Most intriguing however, is the jubilation among the independent and so called progressive media; some media organizations have inundated our ears with “firsts” and “historic” comments that flows from hosts, commentators, and elected officials alike. There is an electoral intoxication that has affected the liberals and “progressives” that have seemed to totally obscure the significance of the mid-term elections and what it represents.

What was Really at Stake

The fundamental determinant in the outcome of the elections was that there was a need for change, more quantitative than qualitative, ideologically that is. The electorate was becoming weary of the deteriorating social conditions they were experiencing at the hands of the Trump administration: continued rising inflation and an oppressive cost of living, right across the board in rents, food, transportation, medical care and just normal everyday existence; the gestapo tactics of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents, and Department of Homeland Security (DHS), resulting in numerous shootings, including the deaths of innocent citizens; infringement on the Constitution regarding Birthright Citizenship; the venomous and vindictive attacks on Freedom of The Press; the biased and racist manipulation of pre-established electoral boundaries; the gutting of the Voting Rights Act; an obscene military budget that continues to rise; the illegal and adventurist war with Iran; the continued material and financial support for the occupation and genocidal regime in Israel. These are some of the  material conditions that fueled the pressing need for change.

The electoral victory should be welcomed and celebrated; the danger, however, is when it becomes a panacea, a substitute for old fashioned working class organization and mobilization. The electoral victory does not represent an ideological or structural break with the relations of capital, or the ownership of the means of production. This is the fundamental point. To treat it as anything more is to trivialize and diminish the urgent need for serious mass political education and organization. Most definitely, a Democratic Party win will put the “brakes” on fascism. It will give the working class an albeit temporary respite from suffocating Policies and actions, meant to strangle and outright kill dissent and the further erosion of the meager bourgeois democratic rights, earned through decades of relentless struggle. The electoral victory must also be translated in putting a stop to the obscene and out of control military spending of the United States. Under the guise of “national security” the defense budget is tantamount to welfare for private defense contractors; they manufacture weapons and systems, which are used to kill innocent people and destroy societies that will take decades to recover at the minimum. The bombing of the school in Minab, Iran, and the devastation of Gaza in Palestine are stark examples. If the electoral victory is to have any meaningful significance, and herald a departure from business as usual, the Democratic Party must definitively address these issues.

Will it be Business As Usual?

The “intoxication” frenzy of the liberals and “progressives” have caused them to experience an analytical disconnect, between the Democratic Party and the socioeconomic system of the United States. The US is a capitalist country and rooted in capitalist relations of production, that is, social production and private accumulation. The ideology of capitalism is obscene individualism, lack of empathy for the poor and oppressed, and militarization at home and abroad. The objective conditions that fueled the electoral victory will not automatically disappear because of the poll results. The Democratic Party will not undergo an overnight transformation because they won the mid-term elections. The Democratic Party establishment failed to throw their support behind Keisha Lance Bottoms, Governor-elect of Georgia, and they gave the cold shoulder to Dr. Abdul E—Sayed, Senator-elect of Michigan, and in general were very lukewarm to “progressive” candidates. The Party leadership unashamedly is complicit in the ongoing occupation and genocide in Gaza. Zionist collaborators and sympathizers who are prominent leaders of the Democratic Party such as Hakeem Jefferies and Chuck Schumer, has openly and consistently shown their support for the Israeli regime.

Scholar and Sociologist, W.E.B. DuBois - Photo: facts.net

The Democratic Party is the other side of the same “coin,” a capitalist organization; on that basis it is foolhardy to expect it to pursue an anticapitalist course. The candidates who won, campaigned on a platform surrounding their own issues and reflecting the general feelings of the electorate. It was their own grassroots organizing and mobilizing, along with the pressing objective conditions, which brought them the electoral victory. Unless this victory seeks to and pursue a course to weaken and dismantle the pillars of capitalism, then it will be business as usual. Nothing qualitatively will have changed for the working class.

The Democrats have historically pursued a path of neoliberalism that has contributed to the wide gap between the rich and the poor; it was under Barak Obama, a Democratic President that the US carried out the assassination of Libyan President Muammar Gaddafi; Bill Clinton initiated the “three strikes” Policy that resulted in mass incarceration of Black men across the United States. For 65 years the US has continued a failed, unilateral, illegal, and immoral embargo against Cuba. The United Nations (UN) for decades has voted overwhelmingly in support of ending the embargo; just this past October the UN again voted in favor of ending the embargo, which has escalated to a blockade. This blockade has reached genocidal proportions on the island of Cuba: By not allowing oil and petroleum products to be delivered to the island has resulted in extensive electricity blackouts; limited transportation services; increased food shortages and insecurity and worst, the Health Care System including the mortality rate has reached a point nearing collapse. In the name of common humanity and respect for International Law, will the Democrats decisively push and use their position in congress to put an end to this madness?

Child cancer patient in hospital at the National Institute of Oncology and Radiation, Havana, Cuba - Photo: Ramon Espinosa/AP

Just this past Tuesday November 10, 2026, the resolution to impeach the Secretary of Defense, Pete Hegseth, was blocked; eleven Democrats did not vote on the Resolution which would have passed. This is business as usual; “the same old, same old.”

The Absence of Leadership and Mass Struggle

It is naïve and political suicide to expect that a Party that is controlled by and represents the interests of capital, will at the minimum challenge the foundations of capitalism. The Democratic Party, just like the Democratic Socialists, are not intent on dismantling capitalism, but make it “palatable” for the working class through failed and discredited neoliberal policies. When it comes to the issue of race, the Democrats are long “weighed in the balances” and found grossly wanting. Fannie Lou Hamer, recognized the limitations of the Democratic Party regarding race and social injustice, giving rise to her co-founding the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party (MFDP) in 1964; in New York 2010, the Freedom Party of New York, was founded by NYC Councilman Charles Barron and a group of NY activists; Malcolm X also realized the dysfunctionality of the Democratic Party, which led to his forming the Organization of Afro-American Unity (OAAU) in 1964. Sociologist and scholar the late W.E.B. DuBois was clear on the hypocrisy of the two parties and their relationship to the working class and especially Blacks: “I believe that democracy has so far disappeared in the United States that no ‘two evils’ exist. There is but one evil party with two names,”

Claudia Jones, journalist and social activist

The words of Frederick Douglass spoken in 1857, aptly describes this moment and what is to be done: “If there is no struggle there is no progress….Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will.” The relevance of Douglass’ comments lies in the facts that are overlooked by the liberals and “progressives” that social injustice, racism, militarism, and the expansion of fascism must be confronted with organized mass action. An electoral victory without mass organization and mobilization against the forces of exploitation and oppression, is not only short-lived, but diminishes the fundamental focus of liberation, struggle; work, work, work.