Midterms: the blue wave roars, but a vote is not yet power

In the aftermath of the midterm elections, the defeat is "total" for Donald Trump, according to franceinfo. The Democrats won every close and undecided race, with breakthroughs in territory that had largely backed the president two years ago. Still according to franceinfo, Americans interviewed attribute this "Blue-nami" to the president's failure to answer the question of purchasing power, with fuel prices at the top of the list.

So much for the facts. What follows is our reading.

It would be a mistake to see in this nothing more than the whim of an electorate. When a tank of petrol and a shopping basket eat up the wage, the ballot paper becomes a cry. People without lobbyists have found the only window still open to say no. It is a revolt from below, even if it passes through the polling booth rather than the strike. The briefing remains thin on detail: we still do not know the precise social makeup of this vote, nor its exact scale, and we do not pretend to.

But let us keep a cool head. Rosa Luxemburg insisted that democracy is indispensable to the working class, because it is by using it, by fighting for it, that the class becomes aware of its interests. The vote is therefore a school, not a joke. But a school is not yet a victory. A parliamentary majority can make life harder for a president; it does not change, by itself, who owns the refineries, who sets the prices, or who decides where the budgets go.

This is where the question of reformism arises, and it is a prickly one. The Democrats were carried by anger over the high cost of living. Will they turn it into a lever of power for those who voted for them, or into a simple electoral asset to be managed until the next poll? The test is straightforward: does each measure strengthen the confidence and capacity to act of wage earners, or does it send them home reassured and disarmed? Concessions won are taken back as soon as profits demand it, and a party that mistakes reform for its goal ends up administering capital.

There is also the other debate, between spontaneity and organisation. An anger that erupts, even at the ballot box, dissipates if nothing gives it structure: unions, neighbourhood committees, assemblies, all the fabric that endures once the cameras have left. A wave, by definition, recedes. What remains is what it left on the sand.

So we will not sulk this Wednesday. Seeing an arrogant power corrected by those it claimed to serve is an honest joy. But a people that has learned to vote must now learn to demand. Blue waves make fine headlines; it is the dykes, the ones you build yourself, that change the coastline.