The massive landslide defeat of ‘Trumpism’ in the recent United States midterm elections demonstrates the popular rejection of every aspect of President Donald Trump and his policies. But note that exit polls also showed something else: popular revulsion towards both main political parties. The US electorate is not as stupid as elites would like them to be.On the effects of Trump’s economic policies, the draconian violations by ICE against minorities, and the fuelling and waging of costly and ill-judged militarism, the election result could hardly have registered a greater rejection of the Trump ultra-nationalist elite-faction approach on the economy and inequality, racist policing, and aggressive imperial wars.The many ‘new dawns’ in the lexicon of the US political classMainstream media outlets have variously declared a new dawn in the US, or hailed a new America being born, due to the massive victory they claim has been scored by the Democratic party, and the defeat of so many of Trump’s picks across the electoral map.New dawns are aplenty in the lexicon of the US political class and their media cheerleaders. There are reasons why such false dawns result, regardless of party in power: the victors have no intention of implementing popular reforms because the donor base of both parties and the foundations of donor wealth require that elected representatives bend before the interests of their paymasters. This is the process Gramsci called ‘passive revolution’ – an elite-led response to mass discontent that aims at performative radicalism while retaining the fundamentals of the status quo.In the GOP, we can see how so many Trump acolytes have started distancing themselves from the president, as indeed many GOP candidates had even before the election. Trump’s brand has been severely damaged including among MAGA supporters, younger voters many of whom voted for him in 2024, and more generally. The very fact that Trump told the New York Times that he would accept the election result because the rout was too big to rig indicates that even claims of election stealing by the so-called deep state no longer hold up. The very credibility of the most extremist administration in living memory lies in tatters – for now at least.But was this election only a rejection of Trump and Trumpism – tariffs, the war on Iran, the political corruption of Trump and his cronies, and the dire conditions of vast swathes of the US population? And was it a pure victory of the politics of the Democratic party? That’s the fairy tale that so many mainstream media are dishing up as analysis.Obama’s victory and ‘passive revolution’When I think of what’s transpired, I hear echoes of the new America that had supposedly dawned with the victory of Barack Obama, and the overnight emergence of a ‘post-racial America’ in 2008. Obama was such a hero to the liberal establishment the world over that he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize merely for being elected. It was likened to a rookie film director receiving an Oscar because he might one day make a great movie. And look how that turned out. Obama was a war president – recall the surge in Afghanistan.At the time, the odds in favour of radical change were said to be incredibly high: Recall that Obama won both houses of Congress, and came to power on a wave of popular revulsion against Bush and the Iraq war. And then, there was the great financial crash of 2008. The gifts rained down as if it were a political Christmas.The planets for radical change, it seemed, were aligned. Obama was seen carrying a book on FDR’s ‘New Deal’ reforms. Capitalism in 2009, as in 1932, was on its knees. And Obama was the perfect ‘outsider’ who would save Americans from the powers that be – who brought only war, hardship and the super-enrichment of the wealthy and corporations and banks that had almost destroyed the global financial system.But, guess what? Obama, despite calls for change, proceeded to bail out rather than blame the banks and pass on the costs of the crisis to ordinary homeowners, paving the way – directly and indirectly – for Trump and Trumpism.A right-wing establishmentIn the 2022 midterms, President Biden, against the odds, performed so well for the Democrats that his subsequent hubristic decision to stand in 2024 led to the disastrous return of the twice impeached fascistic autocrat to office in 2024, with an increased number of votes. This time around, let’s see what the Democrats actually do with their new-found power, and what they actually offer as opposed to what they challenge in regard to the Trump administration. Do they have a programme of change to offer the electorate that goes beyond soundbites and performance? Merely not being Donald Trump has been their staple up to now. The next two years offer a true test as to where the Democrats are on this matter.Left leaders do not get the same treatmentIn both 2016 and 2024, Trump’s was a right-wing nationalist victory in a right-wing establishment which has a far right (GOP) and right-wing party (Democrats) to represent it, with billions of dollars in donations. The Left do not get the same treatment in this political economy. Had Senator Bernie Sanders won the Democratic nomination (and then the US presidency) in 2016, he would have faced the same storm that greeted Jeremy Corbyn as leader of the British Labour Party in 2015. He would have been hounded out of power.This is also not 1932 or 1936 when the ‘New Deal’ tamed rampant free market capitalism with a new political, economic, social and racial coalition – a historic bloc for the radical reform of capitalism that lasted long into the 1990s. Actually, until it was finally dismantled by President Clinton with the abolition of the 1935 Social Security Act and the 1933 Glass-Steagall Act – the two foundations of the New Deal. Obama in the crises of 2008 failed to inaugurate anything resembling a New Deal for the new century. Instead, as he wrote in the Audacity of Hope, the more time he spent with Wall Street donors the more he realised that they think as a class and only of themselves; and the effect on Obama was to shift his thinking in their direction.The conditions in 2026 do not resemble 1960 or 1964 – when Kennedy and Johnson presided over a civil rights revolution powerfully driven by mass power across the board – against racial ineqality, against war, for women’s, Native Americans’, prisoners and others’ rights – but there are grounds for optimism. The past few years have given us the massive No Kings movement, the powerful drive against racist policing after George Floyd’s murder, the move for a general strike in 2028 by trade unions, massive demonstrations against ICE and racist immigration enforcement operations, large-scale shifts against Israel and for Palestinian rights, the rise of socialist political sentiment among the youth and working-class voters. There is a counterhegemonic moment in progress. The Harvard Crowd Counting consortium claims that the US is going through a degree of popular mobilisation larger than the 1960s.DSA-backed candidates more than trebled their representation in the House of Representatives; DSA candidates won dozens of seats across American in local and mayoral elections, including Los Angeles. Even those who don’t support socialism want to reform free market corporate-dominated capitalism.With this election, the forces for change are powerful and the potential is huge. But has ‘No Kings’ been incorporated into the Democratic political-electoral machine? Will it survive this election? Let’s see. There’s no question that the entire US elite should be reeling from the results of the midterms.Reformist policies rarely go beyond tokenismThe GOP rats leaving a sinking USS Trump have their counterpart in those who leaned into criticism of the police after George Floyd’s murder, and the Democrats who temporarily embraced cuts to police budgets amid calls to abolish the police.They leaned in, and then leaned out. They did not break with the past. They conducted a top down process of managing discontent and popular demands for change. We have been here before. It’s called passive revolution by a liberal crisis machine whose very raison d’etre is crisis management.Yet the past is not always the only predictor of the future. There’s always hope if popular mobilisations continue to force elites to increase taxes on the super-rich, cut military spending including aid and weapons to Israel, and move away from the bipartisan establishment’s quest for American global primacy.That would indeed be a new dawn for the entire world. But the popular political earthquake must continue.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.