The peoples of the United States face a collective “fork in the road” in the midterm elections today. Please get out and vote, and bring your neighbors and co-workers with you. Not only does the people’s collective voice need to be expressed, but our voice must be defended.
The stakes for all people, and especially for working and oppressed peoples, LGBTQ people, youth, and women, are high. A huge vote against MAGA candidates is a demand by the people for a different direction in the country away from the white supremacist, fascist, hate-filled, oppressive thuggery that Trump pushes—currently enacted without any hindrance due to MAGA controlling both the House and the Senate. The people can’t move forward with transforming society in their favor unless MAGA is defeated.
There are legitimate concerns that the Trump administration will not honor the vote.
These concerns are even echoed by sections of finance capital, such as Robert E. Rubin in a recent guest essay in The New York Times. Rubin points to the possibility of chaotic and lawless handling of the elections by Trump, including amplifying false claims of fraud, sending armed federal agents to polling locations, seizing ballot boxes, and exploiting a procedural loophole involving the clerk of the House that could enable MAGA to refuse to seat duly-elected Democratic members when the new Congress convenes.
The AFL-CIO warned this past summer that Trump pushes “years-old, thoroughly debunked, alarmingly dangerous conspiracy theories in an effort to undermine our elections and deny Americans their fundamental freedoms.”
The labor federation said the president’s purpose is clear: “divide, scare, and intimidate working people to stop the election of public officials who will hold the rich and powerful accountable for their greed.”
The people will not be scared off, nor will they allow the election to be stolen. Already during early voting, many have expressed their rejection of the Trump agenda and administration, and voted for many fighting, pro-union, and pro-people candidates.
The world is watching this election with bated breath. The MAGA/Trump administration, with its trillion-dollar military budget and imperialist violence, has awakened anxiety and fear worldwide.
The war of aggression against Iran, support for the genocide against the peoples of Palestine, attacks on erstwhile allies, the illegal assault on Venezuela and the kidnapping of its president and first lady, sanctions on the International Criminal Court, the murderous blockade on Cuba, the destabilization of the world economy through war and sanctions, support for fascist demagogues worldwide, economic destabilization via tariffs, and claims over new territories like Canada and Greenland, are the basis for legitimate and deep concern.
This pervasive disregard for humanity and cooperative international relations, including the fiendish brutality of the aggressive war against Iran in which a school full of 160 children was bombed by the U.S., killing all the children (a war crime), is at the core of the Trump/MAGA administration—both internationally and domestically. The people must demand a new path by voting tactically and collectively in the upcoming midterm elections.
The people of the United States have a vested interest in ending this MAGA season of inhumanity and Trump-inspired violence and chaos.
MAGA uses brutality and fomenting despair as tools in an attempt to tamp down protest and opposition. It uses anti-communism as an old trick of the fascist playbook to demobilize and split the working-class forces, including McCarthyite hearings and investigations of progressive organizations.
The unrelenting racist and violent ICE attacks on Black and Latino working people, migrants, and allies, and attacks on anyone who speaks a language other than English, are part of their terror campaign.
Further, despair could arise from the equally fierce price increases across everything needed by people to live, including food and gas prices, the lack of a plan for addressing runaway housing costs, the militarization of public spaces, AI-facilitated civilian surveillance, cutting of environmental safety (including food, air, and water safety for people), and anti-union laws and policies.
These issues are exacerbated by a corrupt Congress and a Supreme Court that, together, allow Trump to rule by decree, without regard to the Constitution or the Bill of Rights.
Judicial attacks on anyone who speaks against MAGA policies, the counterrevolution that hollowed out the wins of the Civil Rights Movement and replaced them with the bizarre white supremacist formulation that white people are the principal victims of racism, add further to the sense of alienation from this country that many feel today.
Yes, despair could arise, but the people remember that the slogan “the people united can never be defeated” is real, and they will not surrender to despair but will keep up the struggle.
Tax dollars are being looted for the financial benefit of the Trump family and their billionaire buddies. Corruption and grift have become a way of political life in the U.S. today. Economic inequality is growing. This inequality is an indicator of the attack on working people and on the organized labor movement, particularly the public sector, which MAGA claims is unconstitutional and seeks to destroy.
Any vestige of respect for the dignity and self-determination of women and people of color, along with the LGBTQ community, is being undermined.
To start to address these horrors, the people of this country must come together in a tactical, united, collective demand for a different way forward—not back to business as usual as it existed during the Biden or Obama years, but toward something new: a worker-led society that prioritizes the needs of the people.
The people of the United States must see this election not as a choice between two capitalist-dominated political parties, but as a choice between a land riven by fascist hate and disrespect for working and oppressed peoples and one united in moving forward toward a worker-led, people’s government that can help resolve the issues facing the majority of people living here today, a land in which working and oppressed peoples can thrive.
In this light, the working class must use all the tools in the toolkit to fight back, including, most importantly voting and mobilizing right now, today.
In the days following the election, the people must continue to work together to build a massive movement, a popular front, to protect the election results. This movement, whose minimal demands will likely be for democracy, freedom of speech, and respect for the rule of law, is needed—as these provide a more solid footing for continued struggle toward socialism.
As CPUSA Co-chair Joe Sims has said: “The popular front, since the 7th World Congress, is seen as a specific form of coalition to combat a very specific danger: fascism. Why? Because to be successful, the coalition must be able to peel off sections of monopoly itself. Thus, it is a multi-class concept. Is it risky and fraught with all manner of betrayals? Yes. But the danger posed by a dictatorship is far greater.”
Voting is a collective statement of the working class and peoples’ movements; it is not an expression of an individual “moral conscience” that stands apart from the struggles of working and oppressed peoples, or of women or youth. The working class, alongside all those who have been hurt by the MAGA policies, must protest together, and these midterms must be seen as a moment of tactical unity across class lines that has the potential to change the actual balance of power to open up new opportunities for struggle.
This is not a time for symbolism. It is a time to stand up and be counted before the tribunal of history—to change the trajectory of U.S. policy from fascist violence, destruction, and corruption toward a more favorable political climate where the struggles for respect, dignity, hope, and policies that meet the real needs of the peoples of the United States and the working people of the world can be fought for and realized.
As with all op-eds published by People’s World, the views expressed here are those of the author.
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