The 2026 Midterm elections were expected to break big for Democrats, though it would be fair to say that it remained an open question as to how large the margin of victory would be. But with the Senate and House both firmly under Democratic control, and surprise results from even deep red states, it can’t be denied that this is a historically noteworthy outcome. But it wasn’t so much the Democrats themselves that achieved this electoral outcome, it was the Republicans. Namely, their many undeniable failures, the first and foremost of which is clearly the Iran War. A war of choice waged in support of an erratic and expansionist Israel with downstream effects on the global costs of fuel and logistical supply networks, the conflict serves as a reminder just how intertwined with foreign policy kitchen table economics are.
The common pablum that voters do not care about foreign policy is an old and dubious canard that, much like James Carville’s reputation as a serious and insightful pundit, must be put to bed. The 2006 midterms were a rebuke of the Iraq War, as was the subsequent 2008 general election which merged the issue with the then ongoing Financial Crisis. The 2016 election likewise had a major element of voters from disproportionately veteran-populated areas swinging from Democrat to Republican based off of Trump’s supposedly less interventionist policies and how they compared to the ultra-hawk Hillary Clinton, adding to the coalition he was already building based off of discontentment with free trade and mass immigration.
Both Obama and Trump ran as change candidates, in no small part this was meant to be a change from the disastrous foreign policy of the George W. Bush Administration. And both Obama and Trump ended up becoming successors to Bush’s ruinous legacy of failed wars, shattered nations, and global instability. The people want change, from either party, and so far they are denied this from both. It was Biden’s fealty to the foreign nation of Israel that doomed both his administration and the potential of his successor’s White House bid by suppressing turnout while Trump lied about being a peace president. It was Trump showing his duplicity by launching an attack on Iran at least partially at the behest of Israel that doubled down and sunk him in turn.
Abdul El-Sayed, who was attacked by both parties and heavily outspent by the pro-Israel lobby, outperformed Kamala Harris in Michigan, including in the county with the largest Jewish population. Election results like these are almost as much a condemnation of Harris and Biden as they are of Trump himself. The swings in the fates of the two major parties are not a sign of voter fickleness, they are a sign of voter constancy. It is, to modify an old phrase, ‘the war, stupid’. And it is the parties, and the parties alone, which promise one thing and deliver another. As such, they are punished by those whose support for change they have betrayed time and time again.
With the Democrats now firmly in control of Congress, the question remains as to if they can learn from their previously blown opportunity in 2006-2016 to change the course on hyper-militarized global policing for something that enables more investment in citizens at home and a more sustainable posture of achieving a balance of power abroad.
READ: Democrats Can Contain the Donroe Doctrine
Rather than give in to the temptation of weaponizing partisan culture war to justify the failed promises of nation building and endless military interventionism (something both sides do as a kind of ping-pong in perpetuity), could they instead draw on a different tradition to guarantee they can actually keep their lead with voters after this election?
The precedent certainly exists.
Figures like “Fighting Bob” La Folette fought Woodrow Wilson’s censorious militarist overreach in the First World War from a progressive direction. James Carden, in his new book The Great Betrayal (Or Books), has also charted how President Franklin Delano Rooselvelt’s original vision of a global concert of powers motivated by a modus vivendi, where the victorious states of the Second World War would not wage ideological struggle against each other, but rather agree to disagree on internal structural policy in the service of global stability. This vision was undermined by Truman and Dean Acheson and eventually destroyed utterly by Jimmy Carter, with his interventionist Carter Doctrine of open ended intervention in the Middle East. This was followed by the rise of the Clintons, who saw a global hegemony of international finance capital as the guiding reasoning behind a truly insatiable American Empire. Collectively, these policies would lead to endless war and sanctioning towards non-compliant countries, increase global instability, and see a hollowing out of American living standards and spending priorities at home. The republic was sacrificed for the empire and all were less well off save a few elites at the top. And this process was and remains fully bipartisan. But the average person is tired of being a crusader nation and now moves more and more in the direction of being a more normal nation. One that certainly invests in defense and deterrence but does not go out seeking, in the words of former President John Quincy Adams, “monsters to destroy”.
READ: Debunking the Myth of America’s Military Victory Culture: From Korea to the Strait of Hormuz
The question is, could the Democrats, having seen time and time again how unpopular the “Forever Wars” are, finally break with them? Can they learn to fill the lane that Trump so falsely claimed and which brought him to ruin? If the past is prologue, the answer seems to be no. However, the contested nature of the primaries and the increasingly obvious fact that AIPAC endorsement now seem to be more liability than benefit to their candidates, shows that the opportunity to change is there.
The American people have shown time and time again that they want a more fair and just economic system and a less imperial foreign policy posture. It is up to our elected leadership to catch up to this trend and cater to it lest all of them face their own future wipeouts in future foreign policy-focused elections.
