Every two years into a presidential administration the American political class and much of the media – the cheerleaders and ringmasters of the system – treat ‘midterm’ elections as a melodramatic great reckoning. Billions of dollars are spent on political advertising, filling the coffers of broadcasters, and are mostly negative about opponents, adding to the toxicity of political life. The elections are built up as a major gladiatorial contest, a referendum on the incumbent administration. It’s all about how control of Congress will shift, they say, or how the president’s agenda will be checked or super-charged. Lame duck or headless chicken seem to be the choices.At stake, the media machine and candidates claim, is nothing less than American democracy itself – which will be either saved or endangered. Voters must send a message that will ring through the corridors of power but… then the next cycle begins and the same claims are repeated. It’s a kind of Groundhog day experience that basically treats voters and observers alike as lacking in memory or judgement of past self-serving elite behaviour. But this ritual has a key function in the system of power, even if or especially because the ritual misses – deflects attention from – the deeper problem. Ritualistic incantations are designed to convince voters that the system will deliver, if they just have faith in the democratic process, that elections will make a massive difference to their lives, that what’s on offer are starkly differing choices of two competing political parties. The great Russian revolutionary, Lenin, put it aptly and accurately way back in 1912: “The [American] people have been deceived and diverted from their vital interests by means of spectacular and meaningless duels between the two bourgeois parties.” Some things never seem to change in any really fundamental way. There was socialistic upsurge then too.And if people don’t vote in this massive exercise in democracy, they are considered apathetic or uncaring, unaware of their own best interests, so it’s their own fault if the other party gets into office.Of course, the real crisis at the heart of modern American political life is less about which party controls the Senate or the House. It is a crisis in the nature of American power itself.Over the past two decades, we have had a menu of billions dollars worth of endless wars and military interventions despite promises to bring them to an end, regardless of the party in office. War budgets – called defence spending by Trump’s Department of War – remain gargantuan even as bridges collapse, schools decay, and millions struggle with medical debt and housing costs. Meanwhile corporate concentrations of wealth grow, and more and more billionaires emerge as heroes of the American dream. Wealth and income piles up at the top, lots of it directed into the two main parties, while working people face stagnant wages and insecure jobs. The political economy of the two parties pays little heed to the political economy of the people.And trust in institutions of democracy, whether it’s Congress, the media, universities, even the courts has fallen sharply. Large parts of the public, among Democrats, Republicans and independents, feel the system is rigged, and benefits those who have most. And they are not wrong.Internationally, the picture is hardly healthier – even soothing words are absent nowadays as the language of gangsters dominates while problems and dangers deepen. Washington may like to speak the language of leadership and rules but the fact is that its own capacity to set the terms of global order has narrowed because allies are hedging and rivals and adversaries are pushing back. Wars, including with Iran, that were meant to demonstrate strength and resolve have instead exposed the limits of a military superpower, and humiliated and exposed US leaders. The United States appears to have lost the ability to either compel obedience or win consent via strength of example, real popular prosperity, let alone moral authority. Hence the increasing resort to the language of violence and to arms – the ‘military definition of reality’ that C. Wright Mills in the 1950s declared the American power elite’s basic orientation, remains its default position, and is intensifying. What is this if not a sign of strain? Vice President JD Vance and his son Vivek board Air Force Two, at Joint Base Andrews, Md., Wednesday, Oct. 21, 2026, en route to Ohio. Photo: AP.And where are the midterm elections in relation to these deep issues, crises, and challenges to living the American dream? They will not touch these realities even if they might change the composition of congressional committees in a game of political musical chairs. Shuffle the pack and make it look like change. They will not reverse rather they will reinforce the dominance of Big Money in politics (2022 broke all records at almost $9 billion), the revolving door between government and industry, and the bipartisan consensus that American global primacy must be maintained at almost any price. Both major parties remain committed to a national-security state that consumes vast resources while ordinary domestic needs go unmet. The foreign-policy establishment, by which I mean think tanks, contractors, career officials and foundations, continues essentially unchanged regardless of election results.What is at the heart of this matter?: it is the latest and deepest crisis of authority and elite legitimacy that US power has seen since the civil war (1861-1865). Elites talk of democracy and the rule of law while many citizens experience a system that delivers only more precarity, insecurity, elite-promoted polarisation, violence and political spectacle. The Romans used the bloody violence of the arena to distract the masses in times of crisis – a grotesque system of bread and circuses. Contempt for the public, whether expressed as “deplorables” or dismissive jokes about ordinary concerns, or the offer to voters of a bribe of $5000 by President Trump, merely deepens the divide. When large numbers of people no longer believe the system works for them, and the parties of the two political branches of corporate wealth offer virtually nothing, elections can only really be pseudo-contests even over symptoms, never deeper causes.The tragedy is that this is not a temporary dysfunction to be cured by better ‘messaging’ or a different majority. It is structural, and built on the combined capacity of economic and military might, coupled with the global ‘legitimacy’ that the US historically enjoyed. Today that capacity is eroding for both domestic reasons (increasing inequality and growing public distrust of political elites) and because globally the costs of permanent war-readiness and intervention have risen beyond what diminishing returns can easily ‘justify’.As a result, the US remains a superpower but no longer enjoys the kind of influence or even consent it used to the world stage. Which begs the question which no one is asking in these midterms: What is the future of American society, its social fabric, and its status as a global power without even a modicum of legitimacy?No doubt the midterms will produce winners and losers, headlines and spin, some new faces but mainly old faces. They will not resolve the crisis at the heart of American power – that’s not even the point. That crisis is about the purpose and sustainability of the power itself. Inderjeet Parmar is a professor of international politics and the associate dean of research, School of Policy and Global Affairs, City St George’s, University of London. He is a Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences and writes the American Imperium column at The Wire. He is the author of several books including Foundations of the American Century and is currently writing a book on the history, politics and crises of the US foreign policy establishment.