Four days after the US elections, fascist President-Elect Donald Trump’s Republican Party is nearing control of all levers of federal governmental power.
Thanks to the Democratic Party’s electoral collapse—the result of the party’s policies of genocide and war overseas, open indifference to the social crisis facing the working class at home and an obsessive promotion of the identity politics of the affluent middle class—Trump has taken the White House, the Republicans have regained control of the Senate and the GOP is highly likely to retain control of the House of Representatives.
The Supreme Court is already in Trump’s hands, his 6-3 far-right majority having issued a ruling in July that grants him immunity from prosecution for crimes committed while in office.
As of this writing, the results of the Democratic election debacle are as follows:
President
Only one state is yet to be called: Arizona, with eleven electoral votes. Trump leads in the state 52.6 percent to 46.5 percent, with 77 percent reporting. On Friday, media outlets called Nevada, with six electoral votes, for Trump. Trump has won the electoral vote, having swept all six of the battleground states that have been called.
With 270 electoral votes needed for victory, he is currently at 301 electoral votes to 226 for Harris. Trump will win the popular vote by a margin of two or three million, again due more to the fall in Democratic votes than to any major gain for the Republican candidate.
US Senate
The Republicans have won control of the Senate from the Democrats. As of this writing, they have 52 seats to the Democrats’ 45 in the 100-seat chamber. Races in two states remain “too close to call.” In Pennsylvania, Democratic incumbent Bob Casey (48.4 percent) trails Republican Dave McCormick (49.0 percent), with 98 percent of expected votes counted.
In Nevada, Democratic incumbent Jackie Rosen (47.8 percent) leads Republican Sam Brown (46.5 percent) with 96 percent of expected votes counted.
In Arizona, Democrat Ruben Gallego (49.7 percent) leads Republican Kari Lake (48.2 percent), with 78 percent of expected votes counted. In that race, the Democrats are trying to hold a seat being vacated by Kyrsten Sinema, who was elected as a Democrat and then switched to become an independent.
US House of Representatives
The Republicans are close to retaining control of the House, having, as of this writing, won 211 seats to 199 for the Democrats in the 435-seat chamber. With 25 contests still not called, and vote-counting continuing in California, Arizona and other states, the Republicans need to win only six more seats while the Democrats need to win another 19.
On Thursday, the Republicans added three seats to their total. The Democrats picked up one seat. They still have a mathematical possibility of flipping control of the House, but it is a very slim one. Two dozen races remain too close to call.
Also on Thursday, Trump’s team announced his appointment of Susie Wiles, co-chair of his 2024 election campaign, to serve as White House chief of staff. The selection of Wiles, a long-time factotum in the Republican Party machine and close personal aide to Trump since 2016, is indicative of the personalist regime Trump plans to assemble when he takes office on January 20, 2025. Wiles, a behind-the-scenes operative with no independent, public presence, is typical of the totally subservient and loyal people Trump is seeking to staff his administration.
Her full support for Trump’s authoritarian plans is underscored by the fact that she was chosen to serve as CEO of Trump’s Save America PAC in March 2021, just weeks after Trump’s unsuccessful attempt to use a fascist mob to overthrow Joe Biden’s election and the US Constitution on January 6, 2021.
Trump has made clear that he will attempt to utilize his control over the state apparatus to impose a dictatorship. He was able to make a right-wing populist appeal to masses of working people facing rampant inflation and poverty by default, there being no alternative presented by the Democrats or any faction within the framework of the two parties controlled by the corporate-financial oligarchy.
Pseudo-left demagogues like Bernie Sanders and the DSA’s Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez played critical roles in channeling mass opposition to the US-funded and armed genocide in Gaza and the crushing social crisis behind the pro-war, pro-genocide, pro-corporate campaign of Kamala Harris. They thereby helped Trump exploit the inchoate anger and disgust of millions of workers and youth.
But Trump will confront enormous opposition in the working class. There have been a series of strikes—Boeing, the East Coast docks, Eaton—in which workers are striving to break free from the control of the pro-corporate union bureaucracies. Trump’s policies of war and social counterrevolution will produce immense shocks that will trigger massive social upheavals in the US, and will reverberate around the world.
Trump will confront an enormous crisis. This will create the objective conditions for the drive of the ruling elite to dictatorship to be defeated, given the fight to bring a socialist and revolutionary perspective for an independent political struggle into the working class.