The Democrats’ capture of both houses of Congress in the November 26 midterms marks the failure of Trump’s governing coalition to deliver its promised settlement. It does not establish popular enthusiasm for the Democratic alternative. Voters can recognise a broken bargain without knowing what should replace it.
The older American settlement combined international economic dominance with domestic consent. Its later, globalising phase rewarded mobile capital, financial intermediaries and highly educated professionals while exposing industrial communities to destructive competition without adequate compensation. Aggregate prosperity concealed geographically concentrated losses: of employment, bargaining power, status and of confidence in the future.
Trump converted those grievances into an insurgency. But his project always contained incompatible ambitions. Workers wanted secure livelihoods and restored communities, ambitions sometimes mocked as 1950s nostalgia. Corporate supporters wanted favourable taxes, supportive regulation, contracts and access to state power. Technological entrepreneurs wanted accelerated disruption and light regulation. The MAGA slogan of national restoration supplied a common vocabulary without resolving these conflicts.
Biden had already recognised part of the problem. Semiconductor subsidies, industrial investment and China tariffs departed from unrestricted globalisation. The contest was increasingly between rival attempts to reconstruct American capitalism for the 21st century. Neither established a durable mechanism connecting national competitiveness to ordinary household prosperity.
An automated factory can strengthen American industry without restoring mass employment. An AI/robotics boom can enrich investors while unsettling professional and blue-collar careers. Protecting domestic producers does not ensure that their workers share the gains. Corporate beneficiaries are organised and persistent; voters can punish a government at the next election but have little control over what replaces it.
The Iran war compounded the contradiction. A campaign intended to weaken an adversary and demonstrate American power imposed household costs without delivering a convincing political conclusion. Military superiority proved easier to project than political victory. An American nationalist repositioning became entangled with another expensive overseas commitment.
The Democrats now face their own struggle over what their victory really means. Their economic left can plausibly claim that their previous posture of managerial reassurance is insufficient; that mass discontent with healthcare, housing provision and the spectre of concentrated wealth offers substantial grounds for mobilisation.
But attaching every economic demand to an obligatory package of progressive cultural and political positions risks sacrificing electoral breadth to activist solidarity. Conversely, establishment-Democrat resistance to substantive reform could reproduce the very grievances that made Trump possible.
Vance has an opening to argue that Republicanism must finally deliver material gains to its working-class electorate: family support, affordable essentials, industrial investment with enforceable conditions, and greater bargaining power at work. Every serious measure here threatens an influential interest which has assembled behind the Republicans. His willingness and ability to disappoint powerful backers will matter more than the sophistication of his rhetoric.
Neither party controls the circumstances under which it must reconstruct its coalition. An AI employment shock, financial crisis or renewed military confrontation could reorder priorities and elevate previously marginal factions with more dubious policies.
America’s turbulence therefore reflects more than polarisation or controversial personalities. Its competing elites can assemble tactical electoral majorities more readily than durable social bargains.
Both parties promise ordinary Americans a greater share in national success while depending on interests reluctant to surrender the advantages required to finance or deliver it. Until either constructs a workable settlement, electoral punishment will continue to alternate with disappointed hope, leaving the American polity vulnerable to further destabilisation.
"The style is better but still too ponderous. It reads like a Foreign Affairs seminar piece. I do wish you'd learn satire, humour and irony. Your writing is still worthy and leaden."
"Yes. I’ve been translating your argument into committee prose. Every sentence wears a tie; none risks saying anything memorable. Then I “improved” your ending by removing its conviction.
"The humour should come from the contradictions themselves:
"Workers wanted the 1950s back. Technology investors wanted to abolish their jobs. Both wore MAGA hats. The Democrats won.
"Whether this was an endorsement of the Democrats remains an awkward question for the Democrats.
"Vance could build a Republican Party that materially benefits its working-class voters. Some difficult conversations with its owners would follow.
"That is closer to the register you want: analytical, dry, pointed. Less “constructing a durable social bargain”; more attention to who ordered dinner and who has been handed the bill."
Rolls eyes.
