Democratic resurgence reflects unease with economic nationalism and inequality, signalling support for a balanced capitalism rather than a socialist alternative
If US President Donald Trump did not label every Democrat who opposed his blinkered policies as communist and anarchist – it would not be fair to expect him to know the difference between the two – and in his unschooled zeal believe that American captains of industry would provide the jobs to their fellow countrymen if he cut off imports through tariff barriers, did not bother to look at the travails of the middle- and lower-middle-class Americans, then the new ginger group among the Democrats called democrat socialists would not have gained prominence.
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His tariff tantrums cut off access to cheap imports for the majority of Americans, and the American corporates which looked for cheaper labour abroad – which made business sense – were reluctant to move back home despite Trump’s threats. Trump was plain ignorant about the workings of capitalism, and he did not understand what made America great. American capital and enterprise were flourishing abroad while providing succour through low-paid jobs in Bangladesh, Vietnam, the Philippines, China and India. Techpreneurs like Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg, Jeff Bezos were too wrapped in their own cuckoo land clouds when they supported Trump. It was the Mad Hatter’s party of ignoramuses. So, the poor and the not-so-poor voted with their feet to remind those wielding political power that things are not good enough on the ground.
The Democrats now have to restore the balance and provide basic welfare programmes like medicare and tame inflation so that businesses will recover and the people can manage with their fluctuating wages. Socialism in America ends there. It is only the pathologically anti-left right-wing extremists like Trump and the handful tech billionaires who dread red invasion in America.
Restoring balance in American free market system
A student of American history will know that the American public did not approve predatory capitalism from the beginning of the 20th century onward. And politicians with vision understood the needs of the people – curbing runaway capitalism. And the process started much before the New Deal of Franklin Roosevelt during the Great Depression.
The 2026 mid-term elections have brought in the Democrats to do the much-needed course correction of the American economic system, and the handful of Democrat socialists pose no threat to American capitalism.
The first three presidents of the 20th century, Theodore Roosevelt, William Taft and Woodrow Wilson, known as presidents of the Progressive Era, by breaking monopolies through anti-trust legislation, regulating private sector operations of public services like the railways, protecting labour, establishing federal income tax and setting up the Federal Reserve between 1901 and 1921. And all this was done without any help from John Maynard Keynes, who is credited with saving capitalism through state intervention in the wake of the Great Depression.
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The vocal radicals of the Democrat socialists will be talking clearly and loudly to scare the likes of Trump and Musk, but the real work of restoring the balance in the American free market system – which will remain an unsatisfactory patchwork in the eyes of the radicals – will be done by the sober and traditional Democrats.
Most immature admirers of free market economy forget that the Financial Recession of 2007-08 when the investment banks melted in the heat of the sub-prime crisis, it was state intervention that propped up the too-big-to-fail big financial institutions.
Americans admirably use socialism to save capitalism whenever it keels over.
The 2026 mid-term elections have brought in the Democrats to do the much-needed course correction of the American economic system, and the handful of Democrat socialists pose no threat to American capitalism. The centrist politicians among the Democrats and Republicans are engaged in the rescue operation. Trump and his supporters can cry hoarse about socialists and anarchists taking over America, but Americans at large are aware that nothing of the sort is happening.
Lesson for Indian right-wingers
This could be a lesson for the Indian right-wingers of all stripes – from the liberal right-wingers to the far-right fanatics – that monopolies are bad for a free market economy and growth, that if wages are depressed and there are fewer jobs it would mar economic growth, that spoon-feeding entrepreneurs with financial aid will not go too far in boosting the economy.
The American mid-term elections, which have put the Democrats at the helm of the Congress and the Senate, provide no windfall to India, either on the economic or strategic front.
These are some of the policies that the Modi government had been unthinkingly following, undoing what Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his team believe to be Congress’ socialism. As a matter of fact, Mr Modi is following Congress’ socialist policies without daring to admit it, placing the state in the driver’s seat as it were of the economy.
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The economic realities of the United States and India are vastly different, and the incumbent leaders are fighting different windmills of their own imagination. Trump is fighting the ‘communists’, which includes former president Barack Hussein Obama, and Mr. Modi is fighting secularism of the Congress.
Trump is in reality fighting American capitalism which has followed its own market logic, and Mr Modi is actually promoting socialism with one hand, while supporting select “wealth-creators”, to borrow Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman’s coinage. But people want jobs and not doles, and the prime minister knows that he cannot do it. He also does not realise that his present policy to create global giants in the country is at best a chimera.
The Modi government naively believes that Trump is a friend of India because the American president is a right-winger like the prime minister and his party, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). Some in the government and among the chattering classes also entertain the misconception that the Democrats are India-friendly, which they clearly are not. They are going to bargain as hard as the Trump administration over trade. The American mid-term elections, which have put the Democrats at the helm of the Congress and the Senate, provide no windfall to India, either on the economic or strategic front.
The tale of the United States, the oldest democracy on the one hand, and that of India, the largest democracy, makes for strange reading. It should not be surprising because flip-flops in the public mood on the one hand, and the fancies of the leaders at the top, are quite often at loggerheads. Socialism, like a red rag, hovers over the political horizon of both the polities.
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