On the 2026 Midterm Electoral Farce – Part 2: Boycott the Elections, Reconstitute the Communist Party USA!

Read Part 1: Elections Legitimize Imperialist Dictatorship here.

Editorial Board

The 2026 US midterm electoral farce is unfolding in the context of continued economic crisis, greater accumulation of wealth among the top monopolists, and worsening general conditions for the masses. This antagonism is reflected in a political situation characterized by growing imperialist militarization and aggression amid its strategic defeat in its war against Iran, increased reactionization and repression, hysteria around electoralism, and disconnected rebellions and protests across the country verging on a situation of countrywide mass rebellion.

This two-part series explores why the elections are a farce and the need to boycott the elections in service of the reconstitution of the Communist Party USA.

Bribery in the 2026 Midterm Electoral Farce

Under bourgeois democracy, bribery of elected officials is open and made publicly known as “donations”. It is one of the clearest ways in which the bourgeoisie maintains its rule, and shows the financial interests each of the parties particularly favor.

A 2011 study published in the Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory shows that “companies that contributed more money to federal candidates subsequently received more contracts.”

In House races, campaign spending data shows about 93% of the top spending candidates win. In the Senate, this sits around 80%.

Since the rise of super PACs in 2010, which allow the rich to raise unlimited amounts of money for candidates, election spending has skyrocketed. Total election spending went from about $5 billion in 2008 to about $15 billion in 2026.

In the 2026 midterms, a record $11.6 billion is projected to be spent on ads alone, surpassing even the 2024 presidential elections.

According to data compiled by The Washington Post, as of late July, the 50 biggest “donors” to the 2026 midterm electoral farce spent a combined total of over $1.6 billion.

A notable feature of this election’s spending cycle is the heavy shift toward the Republican mafia, both because they are the incumbent party and also because the Democrats proved to be a bad investment in the last election cycle. About 80 cents for every dollar spent in the 2026 midterms has gone to the Republican mafia so far.

Cryptocurrency monopolies have spent more on the electoral farce than any other sector, roughly $189 million or 37% of all corporate spending in the midterms, according to Cryptonews.

In its article titled, “Fairshake, $48M, and the Senate Vote Ripple Is Racing to Win”, the author writes:

“Fairshake [the main crypto PAC] operates through three organizations. The flagship super PAC supports candidates from both parties, while Protect Progress backs Democrats and Defend American Jobs supports Republicans. This structure lets donors compete in both parties’ primaries without presenting every campaign as explicitly pro crypto.

“The network mainly targets low-turnout primaries, where relatively modest advertising budgets can influence competitive races. Fairshake entered 2026 with about $64 million already available, giving it an established political operation before new fundraising began.”

In other words, the network invests wherever it has the best chances of buying an election, relying on the masses not participating in the elections. The names of the PACs for the Democrat mafia vs the Republican mafia are opportunistically chosen on the most superficial basis of appeal.

Why is crypto such a heavy investor? Because it is a newer sector, and the top monopolists in the industry are seeking regulations to preserve its capital and stabilize itself, cementing their position over smaller capitalists in the field. More established sectors like arms monopolies do not spend as much in the electoral farce, but instead focus their efforts on lobbying to get their specific interests met from specific politicians. Total federal lobbying reached a record of over $5 billion in 2025.

It is notable that Trump made billions of dollars from crypto, that he pushed for regulatory legislation for the industry, and that his campaign was a recipient of tens of millions of dollars from crypto monopolies.

The Political Context of the 2026 Midterms

The bourgeoisie has to agitate the masses around their economic and political problems to gain their support, seeking to legitimize bourgeois dictatorship and mobilize the masses behind it. At the same time, the mobilization of the masses is a double-edged sword because the people have fundamentally antagonistic interests to the bourgeoisie. The bourgeoisie scratch the surface but risk opening the wound. This creates the conditions of increased likelihood of mass rebellions as the election cycle nears. The Democratic mafia attempts to seize leadership of rebellions to increase electoral turnout for its party, while the Republican mafia uses rebellions as a pretext to drum up chauvinism to mobilize the most backward masses behind its party.

Regardless of which mafia wins, each will continue to faithfully serve the interests of the bourgeoisie, aiming to maintain US imperialism’s status as the sole hegemonic imperialist superpower, using the rhetoric of the US being the greatest and most powerful country in the world to justify the expansion and aggression of the world counterrevolutionary police.

Both parties are facing worsening crises of popularity of their own making. According to aggregate polling data compiled by The New York Times, Trump’s disapproval hit a record of 60% on August 1, lower than Biden, Obama, and Bush compared to the same point in each of their presidencies. Disapproval steadily increased since Trump took office.

According to April data from the Pew Research Center, 58% of US adults have an unfavorable view of the Republican mafia and 59% have an unfavorable view of the Democratic mafia. While disapproval of the Republican mafia has remained mostly stable between 2020-2026, the Democratic mafia has lost considerable support, going from 51% disapproval to 59% in the same period. In 2025, only 36% of US adults supported the Democratic mafia.

This speaks to the presidential election results in 2020 and 2024, where the Republican mafia received roughly the same amount of votes while the Democrats lost 10 million votes.

The political context of the 2026 midterms is the crisis of legitimacy of both parties, especially the Democratic mafia. The Republican mafia aims to maintain its domination of the state bureaucracy to further reshape it and entrench its particular strategy to preserve US imperialism, with preference toward its favored monopolists. Within the Republican mafia, Trump is aiming to maintain strict loyalty to his specific vision of how his mafia can maintain its monopoly of the state bureaucracy as cracks of dissent are forming.

The Democratic mafia continues to be weighed down by a dual financial and legitimacy crisis—after outspending the Republican mafia by a factor of three but losing in a landslide to Trump in the 2024 presidential farce, monopolists are increasingly shifting support to the Republican mafia. The Democrats are stuck experimenting with different messaging, particularly with social democracy, to see what will best mobilize the masses behind them to prove to the monopolists that they are still capable representatives by regaining a majority in the House and Senate. From there, the Democrats are eyeing the presidential race to recapture the executive branch and build off the Republican mafia’s restructuring, using the expanded powers of the executive to get an edge up in their control of the state bureaucracy.

Contradictions Within the Republican Mafia

The MAGA movement shows signs of fracturing. While the personality Donald Trump continues to exert influence, the economic and political facts of his administration further immiserating the people (including his voters) undermine the theatrics, giving impulse to new trends trafficking in the old populism under the guise of staying true to the initial decrepit slogan, Make America Great Again. There is also the fact that Trump is nearing the end of his presidency, setting off a succession crisis.

The disgruntled MAGA elements such as Tucker Carlson—who has even threatened to start a third party—and Marjorie Taylor Greene are the most perceptive to the changes to come and are positioning themselves to gain a leading role in what is to come. This includes anti-Israel rhetoric, economic populism, and opposition to wars. Such sentiments stem from the realities imposed on US imperialism in the battlefield and its worsening strategic defeat at the hands of the armed resistance in the Middle East.

The annihilation of the ultra-reactionary media personality Charlie Kirk has facilitated this fracture. On the one hand, similar personalities like Candace Owens spread conspiracy theories that he was assassinated by Israel due to his supposed shifting views on the Zionist entity, and on the other, Kirk’s annihilation creates a vacuum for smaller personalities to fill, each one vying for space and time, the competition forcing the parasites to be better salesmen and dig deeper in their trafficking in the masses’ interests.

Contradictions Within the Democratic Mafia

One of the key features of the midterm electoral farce is the rise of the social-democratic wing of the Democratic mafia. This is through the active support of revisionist organizations like Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) and to a lesser extent Party for Socialism and Liberation (PSL).

Social democracy is a compensatory measure of economic and political corruption to preserve capitalism by tailing after the advanced masses and attempting to split them and redirect their struggles into electoralism. It promotes class collaboration through bribery, chauvinism, and superficially radical rhetoric.

The rise of social democracy comes amid a funding crisis for the Democratic mafia. Social democrats have excelled in operating on relatively lean budgets, mobilizing volunteer armies and relying more heavily on social media, which is not typical for the dominant wing of the party.

Like the more perceptive Republican counterparts, the social democrats take on the form of the most radical elements of the party, making them the most reactionary. Radicalism in defense of imperialism is the most counter-revolutionary, pushing the hardest for counter-insurgency with social fascist impulses that aim to mobilize and incorporate the masses into the state while pushing for the nationalization of industries.

The aim of social democrats, both explicitly and implicitly, is to rejuvenate the Democratic Party by gaining the confidence of the advanced masses—those disillusioned with electoral politics and the Democratic mafia in particular—and mobilizing them behind imperialism through the prospect of bribes.

They are in sharp competition with the dominant faction of the Democratic Party to prove themselves as more capable representatives of the ruling class by mobilizing more people behind them. The New York Times reported in August on the launch of a $15 million PAC aimed at undermining the DSA and social democrats. The PAC identifies DSA as a mortal threat to the Democrats and funnels money to “centrist” Democrats.

The latest successes of social democratic candidates has to do with the deep crisis of the Democratic Party in particular and the general crisis of US imperialism broadly. How the bourgeoisie is able to manage the present and future economic crises and the degree to which it can stabilize itself will be key indicators in how quickly social democrats can gain ascendancy within the Democratic mafia.

The problem the ruling class faces with their electoral farce is that their “new” populist tricks will soon grow old as the false promises inevitably expose them, first as individual candidates, and later as trends. This process is already unfolding with Trump, who every month hits a new record low in his popularity while his MAGA trend threatens to split ranks, and the more extreme elements push further into right populism.

The “underdogs” are still dogs, just with a few more tricks.

A Note on the Particular Danger Posed by Social Democracy

Within the process of the midterm electoral farce, the rise of social democracy is the most damaging to the working class movement, and strategically represents the most reactionary trend despite (or rather, because of) its “progressive” appearance. It is the trend that most embodies corporativism, the acceleration of reactionization, and its development toward social fascism. For this reason, agitation, education, and mobilization of the masses against social democracy in particular is one of the most important tasks of revolutionaries in relation to the electoral farce.

Social democracy is a corrupting influence that aims to bribe the masses, particularly its upper crust: the labor aristocracy, the academic and technocratic petty bourgeoisie and professionals, and the upper strata of the minorities. These elements are more amenable to bribery and superficial reforms when packaged in “progressive” rhetoric and identity politics, and the more radical of these elements will justify it as a step toward revolution—a revolution that remains on a forever-distant horizon for them and which they have no understanding of how to reach.

The strengthening of social democracy means the strengthening of rightism within the working class movement. It affirms class collaboration, that the state is a neutral tool the working class can use to make the monopolists pay its “fair share”, and that the problems of the masses can be solved peacefully by the bourgeois state. It promotes capitulationism and the corrosive spread of pessimism while weakening militancy.

The rhetoric and policies of social democrats only provide cover for more exploitation and war. When they are on the outside, they oppose it; when they are on the inside, they make excuses for it. They try to distract from their service to imperialism through crocodile tears or a smiling face.

Their supporters defend them by citing the limitations of their abilities, but this is the point—even if these bourgeois servants were the most adamant defenders of the people’s rights (and they never are), the bourgeois state is tied in a million ways to the stock exchange.

The tired formulation of using an elected position to expose the bourgeois state is outdated when it is already exposed to the majority of workers. Why tail after those who still have illusions in bourgeois democracy while those who do not have such illusions remain almost entirely without organization or leadership?

The role of DSA in particular has been written about elsewhere in The Worker: “DSA serves as a pipeline back into the Democratic Party. They speak of ‘socialism’ and working-class ‘power’ but ultimately channel that energy into campaigns that uphold US imperialism, something at the root of the DSA itself. Its founder, Michael Harrington, openly defended the US war in Vietnam and US support for Israel and built the organization to act as a ‘left conscience’ of the Democratic Party, not an alternative to it.” The form may have changed over time, but its function and aspiration remain the same.

The Problems of the Masses Cannot be Solved by the Electoral Farce

Candidates will cite the problems of the masses to gain legitimacy and sell themselves as the one who will make the difference. But somehow or another, after 250 years of bourgeois democracy, the conditions of the people only get worse while the rich get richer and more powerful. Isn’t 250 years enough evidence to prove that this election cycle won’t be fundamentally different? Whatever crumbs that have been handed out end up getting swept away by imperialism as it decays. Whether this be cash bribes, rent freezes, or something else, these promises are inevitably twisted around and only “granted” when it is in the best interests of the bourgeoisie to do so. This means either the concession is simply a byproduct of policies that gorge the imperialists, or aimed at preventing rebellion.

The biggest problem on the minds of the masses is affordability. According to Bloomberg, the worst performing stock sector over the past year is consumer discretionary, commodities people buy with extra income. As inflation increases, workers are finding that they have to work multiple jobs and for longer hours, and that every little bit they have has to be put into making money some way or another as part of the “gigification” of the economy. If you can work more, you will be paid less so that you have to work longer, and the use of AI to individualize minimum wages alongside the expansion of contract “gig” work is an assault on the entire working class. Likewise, the ongoing layoffs corresponds to overwork for those who keep their jobs, with both serving the basis of the record monopoly profits. The state assists the monopolies through tax cuts, subsidies, grants, loans, state terror, sanctions, and wars, all paid for by the workers through taxes and inflation.

Economic bribes are the easiest and most cost effective for the ruling class and its government because they can rally people behind them without making even superficial changes. Ultimately, economic bribes cannot work for very long because they come up against imperialism’s drive to increase exploitation and wage war, which can only mean overall worsening conditions for the vast majority of the people.

Another problem facing the masses is ICE terror. Again, here the two parties are basically in agreement regarding the need for ICE terror to manage the flow of labor and enforce labor discipline, but have tactical disagreements regarding how to go about this. The “bipartisan” expansion of ICE and deportations are evidence of this. Likewise, in all places where anti-ICE rebellions have broken out, both parties have worked together to suppress the people—Los Angeles, Minnesota, Newark, to name a few. This includes those politicians who call for the abolition of ICE. At an August 2026 meeting of the Democratic National Committee, there was a resolution passed in support of abolishing ICE—with the caveat, of course, that the vote is nonbinding, and the additional caveat that a contending resolution calling for reforming ICE was also passed. This speaks to the divisions within the Democratic mafia, the depth of their crisis, and ultimately their inability to address the demands of the people. Such developments will undoubtedly be used by electoral opportunists to say that the Democrats are shifting their views and that this time things will be different. The fact that they oversee the repression of those fighting against ICE—the only method that has been successful in forcing ICE to retreat—shows that they are not concerned with stopping ICE terror, but lowering its intensity to seek stability.

Militarization domestically is unfolding hand-in-hand with militarization and increased aggression internationally, particularly against the Third World in the Greater Middle East and Latin America.

It is no secret that US imperialism wants to stabilize the situation in the Middle East under the domination of US imperialism so that it can turn its attention to China; this is the content of the Abraham Accords begun under the first Trump administration, continued under Biden, and now in shambles under the second Trump administration. It was in part this process of bribing Arab lackey governments to develop ties with Israel that led the Palestinian armed resistance under the leadership of Hamas and its allies to spring into action with Operation Al-Aqsa Flood. Both the Biden administration and the Trump administration thought that they could squash the resistance with genocide; both have failed. The Trump administration then sought to undercut and isolate the resistance through a frontal attack on Iran, which has failed even more miserably and now threatens US imperialism’s very presence in the region. The Democrats were already preparing the ground for such an attack during Kamala Harris’s election campaign, who identified Iran as the main threat to US imperialism rather than the usual choice of Russia or China, but have since been taken aback by the brashness of the invasion and its failures under Trump’s management. They are glad they weren’t the ones to start the war and can now play the “opposition” with empty congressional votes to drum up support in the midterms.

The uptick in politicians talking about withdrawing support for Israel only comes after Israel’s economy has worsened due to the successes of the armed national resistance and international solidarity, becoming more of a liability to US imperialism to continue providing protection. The presence of US military bases in the region is even up for debate within the highest ranks of the Pentagon, and politically this contradiction extends to the level of support for Israel.

US divestment from South Africa only followed violent rebellions against the apartheid state that made the country unstable and threatened the profitability of investments. The solution of the imperialists was the formal abolition of apartheid while maintaining fundamentally the same structure. The “anti-Israel” politicians now call for the same thing: equality between Palestinians and Israelis, which can only mean propping up the comprador Palestine Authority under the auspices of the genocidal Israel, both subservient to US imperialism, in order to stabilize the situation for US finance capital.

In the same breath that they “condemn” Israel, these bourgeois politicians never fail to denounce Hamas and the armed resistance—the forces who are fighting for their freedom while being starved to death and facing genocide—and the wretches do so even without AIPAC money. Their trafficking rides off the coattails of the Palestine solidarity movement, strengthening the liberal pacifist line within it and channeling the movement behind the Democratic mafia, the party that oversaw the largest transfer of money and arms to Israel at the height of its genocide.

The Election Boycott and the Demands of the Masses

The working class fights for more pay and social insurance and against work speed-ups and longer working days, among other demands. The trend of combining state power with monopoly capital increasingly politicizes the working class, not only in its struggle for economic demands, but its struggles against state terror (ICE, police, and political repression) and the general restriction of democratic rights.

The ongoing strike wave since 2018 is taking on an increasingly political dimension, with demands cropping up against ICE and protections for foreign-born workers, and opposition to the US-Israeli genocide in Gaza. Workers raised calls for a general strike in opposition to ICE terror in January 2026, and the United Auto Workers (UAW) has called for a general strike on International Workers Day (May 1) 2028 in connection with the presidential electoral farce.

While workers are being drawn into political struggles, the relative dispersal of revolutionaries means that for the time being these struggles are and will generally take place (with few exceptions) under the leadership of the labor aristocracy and other representatives of finance capital among the working class, such as the revisionist and reformist organizations.

As long as these struggles remain under the leadership of the representatives of the bourgeoisie, they will ultimately remain bourgeois struggles carried out by bourgeois organizations, fixated on wresting this or that demand.

Contrast this to the duty of revolutionaries laid out by the great Lenin:

“The struggle of the workers becomes a class struggle only when all the foremost representatives of the entire working class of the whole country are conscious of themselves as a single working class and launch a struggle that is directed, not against individual employers, but against the entire class of capitalists and against the government that supports that class. Only when the individual worker realizes that he is a member of the entire working class, only when he recognizes the fact that his petty day-to-day struggle against individual employers and individual government officials is a struggle against the entire bourgeoisie and the entire government, does his struggle become a class struggle,” and that it is the task of communists “by organizing the workers, by conducting propaganda and agitation among them, to turn their spontaneous struggle against their oppressors into the struggle of the whole class, into the struggle of a definite political party for definite political and socialist ideals. This is something that cannot be achieved by local activity alone.”

The task of revolutionaries is to overcome dispersal through the struggle for unity under Maoism, and where this unity exists, to make Maoism incarnate by going among the masses, principally the decisive sections of the proletariat, and win leadership of their struggles by combining the struggle for daily demands with the struggle for the conquest of power, implacably and inseparably combating imperialism, revisionism, and opportunism.

The election boycott is a powerful tactic to unite with the deepest and lowest masses—who already generally do not vote—against the electoral farce and on this basis engage them in their struggle for demands while educating them on its relation to the question of power.

The corrupting influence of social democracy brings increased support for the electoral farce by posing bribes as a solution to the economic and political demands of the masses. At the same time, it provides an opportunity for revolutionaries to demarcate themselves from the revisionists as part of the process of winning leadership over the masses.

It is not uncommon to hear from activists in response to the election boycott, “Can’t we do both?”—can’t we participate in the bourgeois electoral farce and fight for revolution? Technically yes, in the same sense that one can take a step forward and then take a step backward. One can also donate to AIPAC and then go to a pro-Palestine protest. The question is not about whether one can do both, but understanding how the two form an antagonistic contradiction. This is why discussion on the election boycott must always relate back to the question of revolution and reconstitution of the Communist Party.

A century and a half ago Engels pinned this trend of bourgeois and petty-bourgeois socialism, which “takes the form that while the fundamental views of modern socialism and the demand for the transformation of all the means of production into social property are recognized as justified, however, the realization of this is declared possible only in the distant future, a future which for all practical purposes is quite out of sight. Thus, for the present time, one has to have recourse to mere social patchwork, and sympathy can be shown, according to circumstances, even with the most reactionary efforts for so-called ‘uplifting the working classes.’”

This perfectly describes the reformists and revisionist today, who proclaim the need for revolution, but have no conception of how to get there or how their actions today relate to revolution; who take a messianic view of revolution as “waiting for the right time”, as if suddenly these completely legal organizations with no experience in illegal methods will transform into the leadership of an insurrectionary proletariat at the right moment. These reformist and revisionist organizations mobilize the masses behind imperialist politicians who time and time again betray the masses under the banner of “uplifting the working classes”—is this not the reactionary efforts that Engels describes?

Revolutionaries must turn every discussion on the elections into a question of revolution—not only of its necessity, but of its inevitability; not only that it is something that will happen in the future, but a process we carry out now, today, in the stage of reconstitution; that the proletariat needs its own political party, not an electoral one, but an underground one capable of leading the masses at the heart of the class struggle to act increasingly outside the bounds of what is permitted by the old state.

Make the demarcation clear how electoralism is steeped in pessimism while the election boycott is based in a scientific, revolutionary optimism; how voting is even worse than doing nothing, redirecting the rebellions of the masses into the play pens of the bourgeoisie, while the election boycott means active participation in political life, fighting for self-determination against the blackmail and threats of opportunists and electoral cretins.

Concessions are only spectrally linked to the elections; in reality, concessions are conquests wrested from ruling class masters through struggle. But even if the two parties did concede to some demands of the people, this would only serve to further entrench their domination, and therefore serve as a basis to take those very concessions back as conditions inevitably get worse.

What workers need is their own independent fighting organization, the Communist Party, the advanced detachment of the working class and the axis of everything. Under revolutionary leadership, concessions do not demobilize the masses but instead are used as a basis to strengthen their ability to fight harder and better, for the legal to strengthen the illegal, toward the initiation of people’s war and the conquest of power bit by bit.

Conclusion

Economic pressure exacerbated by the political problems of the imperialists will make the electoral farce particularly sharp for a midterm, setting the stage for the 2028 presidential elections, and portending great turbulence ahead where the class-conscious workers and revolutionaries are to swim.

To the extent that the masses believe they can resolve their economic and political problems through peaceful means and electoralism in particular, to that extent they will hold reservations about revolution. To the extent that the masses participate in the bourgeois elections, doing so as the “extreme left wing” (as Engels puts it) of the bourgeoisie, they remain unprepared for their self-liberation.

In its process of maturing and preparing itself for self-liberation, the proletariat constitutes or reconstitutes its party to carry out revolution, becoming a class for itself, independently and antagonistically to the bourgeoisie. It is the duty of all revolutionaries to promote the election boycott in service of revolution and the reconstitution of the party of the proletariat, the principal task of all revolutionaries in the US.

The contradiction among the imperialists and their political parties should not be handled by supporting one group against another; this only strengthens imperialism. Revolutionaries must take advantage of these competing interests to strengthen the position of the proletariat. “Chairman Mao told us that we must pay close attention to the fight among the reactionaries, because it is like when friends fight—their dirty laundry comes out into the open; there, many truths emerge that can be used against them” (VND Peru).

The election boycott utilizes the hatred of the masses toward the ruling class, and through exposures of the electoral farce, educates the masses on the nature of the imperialist system itself and the conquest of power as the only solution to the problems of the masses.

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