The US interventionism is a symptom of a dying political consensus, with the 2026 midterms set to decide if the nation will reform or escalate
Suhail Farooq Khan
Just ten days into 2026, any sense of global stability already feels fragile. Across the world, elections are being shaped by the same pressures: inflation, housing shortages, stagnant wages, and a growing sense that everyday life is getting harder rather than better. The United States is no exception, and this week alone offered two striking images of the country’s political direction.
On one hand, Zohran Mamdani was sworn in as Mayor of New York City after defeating not only a Republican challenger but also the Democratic Party’s own establishment-backed candidate. On the other hand, the United States escalated military involvement in Venezuela, signalling a more confrontational foreign policy posture.
At first glance, these events seem unrelated: one local, one international; one hopeful, one dangerous. In reality, they are symptoms of the same underlying problem: a political system that no longer delivers economic security at home and increasingly turns outward to manage the consequences.
What we are witnessing is not just partisan conflict, but the breakdown of the political agreement that has governed the United States for decades.
The Death Of The Sixth Party System
For more than forty years, Democrats and Republicans differed in rhetoric but largely agreed on fundamentals: free trade, weak labour protections, privatisation, and a shrinking social state. This Sixth Party System survived recessions, wars, and scandals, but it could not survive sustained economic stagnation for the majority.
The 2008 financial crisis shattered public faith in this model, yet political elites responded by rescuing institutions rather than households. What followed was a lost decade for the working class: rising rents, precarious employment, and declining social mobility. Trump’s rise in 2016 was a crude but unmistakable rejection of that order. His return to office in 2024 confirmed that the old consensus is no longer electorally stable.
The United States has entered an unresolved transition. Whether this becomes a genuine Seventh Party System or degenerates into permanent instability depends on which social forces gain political control.
Democrats: Reform Or Irrelevance
Nowhere is this tension more visible than inside the Democratic Party. Despite recent electoral wins in New York City, Virginia and New Jersey, the party’s national leadership remains deeply distrusted. To many voters, it represents continuity without competence, defenders of institutions that no longer deliver material security.
The 2024 election exposed a fundamental truth: the Democratic Party lost the working class before the working class abandoned the party. Appeals to procedural norms and incremental reform proved hollow in the face of soaring living costs.
In 2025, Mamdani tackled these issues within his party head-on. He called out the establishment Democrats on their failures to resonate with the struggles of the new generation of voters – the 18 to 34 age group, who are most affected by inflation, cost of living and struggle to find jobs and rental accommodations. He succeeded in his battle for NYC and defeated not only the Republican candidate but also the establishment’s original favourite candidate, former Governor Andrew Cuomo.
This was not an isolated success. Similar campaigns are now emerging across the country, challenging party leaders from within and winning where cautious, centrist messaging has failed.
The message from voters is clear: they are demanding a new political consensus. If the Democratic establishment fails to adapt, responsibility for that failure rests with the establishment itself.
Resistance from the party establishment is not just about ideology. It reflects real financial interests. A more redistributive agenda would require breaking ties with major donors in finance and real estate who currently shape party priorities. The upcoming midterm elections will test whether Democrats are willing to change or whether they will defend a shrinking political centre at the cost of long-term relevance.
Republicans: Populism Without Redistribution
The Republican Party has already detonated its post–Cold War identity and shrugged off the Sixth Party System and neoliberal consensus, but the replacement remains incoherent.
Trumpism successfully mobilised resentment against globalisation and elite liberalism, yet it offers no durable economic alternative. Tariffs without industrial policy, nationalism without welfare, and isolationist rhetoric alongside military escalation form a politics of contradiction.
As inflation persists and promises of stability go unmet, the administration has increasingly turned outward. History offers a familiar lesson: when domestic legitimacy weakens, foreign confrontation becomes a substitute for economic delivery. It is failure at home which has forced Trump to find success abroad, not in stopping war as promised, but starting new ones to bring in the establishment Republicans, who may abandon him if the party loses in midterms.
This pivot also signals a partial reconciliation with establishment Republicans, slowing the internal transformation of the party towards a new party system that once seemed inevitable. The result is a party attempting to straddle populist anger and elite continuity, a balance that may prove unsustainable.
The implicit message to Republican voters is clear: change will proceed only at a pace comfortable for the establishment. Whether that bargain holds remains uncertain.
Empire As Political Insurance
American foreign policy has long functioned as an extension of domestic power struggles. Military assertiveness and economic coercion are repeatedly justified in the language of security or democracy, but their timing often reveals electoral logic. In moments of internal fracture, external enemies provide temporary unity.
The danger is not merely moral but systemic. In an interconnected global economy, interventionist impulses carry immediate consequences, energy shocks, regional instability, and humanitarian crises that reverberate far beyond U.S. borders. What is presented domestically as strength frequently exports chaos.
The Stakes Of The 2026 Midterms
The 2026 midterms are therefore not a routine contest for congressional seats. They are a referendum on whether American politics will confront class conflict directly or continue managing decline through spectacle and coercion.
For Democrats, the choice is between redistributive reform and managed irrelevance. For Republicans, it is between constructing a genuine post-neoliberal economic vision or retreating into militarised nationalism. The outcome will shape not only domestic governance, but the global order that still orbits American power.
Empires Don’t Go With A Bang, But A Whimper
The age of consensus is over. What comes next will not be decided by moderation, but by which side is willing to name the crisis and act on it.
The writer is Assistant Editor at Review of Democracy, CEU Democracy Institute and LLM Graduate in Comparative Constitutional Law, Central European University
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