As the 2026 elections near, Socialist Workers Party candidates find increasing interest in their campaigns. They offer the only class-struggle program to protect workers from the attacks we’ve faced under both Democratic and Republican administrations and the further assaults the bosses and their parties have in store.
Both the Democrats and Republicans exist to uphold the rule of the wealthy capitalist families and to advance their wars. In a world increasingly marked by conflicts over resources, markets, exploitable labor and spheres of influence, the U.S. rulers are driving to advance their position and maximize their profits on the backs of the working class and to turn us against each other.
As SWP candidates knock on doors, join strike picket lines and political protests, they find disgust with the bosses’ parties and serious interest in discussing what workers can do to strengthen our unions, combat the rise in Jew-hatred and unify workers — native-born and foreign-born alike. SWP candidates explain the working class represents the vast majority, and can chart a course to take political power into our own hands and reorganize society from top to bottom in the interests of the toiling majority. They urge those interested to join the SWP and build the revolutionary workers party needed to lead this fight.
In previous decades the Democratic Party claimed it looked after workers’ interests. But today it openly expresses the narrow concerns of liberal middle-class meritocrats who dominate the party. These social layers consider themselves the “smart people,” most capable of making decisions for the working class and controlling us on behalf of the capitalist rulers. They hope to preserve their own privileged position, fearing a deepening crisis will drive them down into the working class. These layers are an important source of the rise of Jew-hatred, especially since Hamas’ murderous Oct. 7, 2023, pogrom in Israel.
Democrats, from both the party’s liberal and so-called socialist wing, increasingly slander Israel. They claim it’s carrying out “genocide,” when the simple fact is Israel does the opposite — it fights to defend itself from the ceaseless efforts of Hamas and its sponsor in Tehran to destroy the one country that offers Jews a refuge.
The only road to create openings for Palestinians in Gaza to be able to advance is through the defeat of Hamas.
Former President Barack Obama pointed a finger at Israel Oct. 13, accusing it of having “ceded the moral ground” in its war with Hamas.
Michigan’s Democratic attorney general, Dana Nessel, went further, telling a group of Jewish Democrats they should place “the needs of the world” above Israel’s “right to exist.” Jews must “sacrifice the comfort, safety and security and even the very future of our own people,” she declared.
The normalization of Jew-hatred is pronounced in the Democratic Party and its allies in the liberal press, but extends to both main capitalist parties. From Congress, to the arts and media, efforts abound to bar supporters of Israel’s right to exist from the right to speak or perform. These attacks are deeply unpopular in the working class.
During the 2024 presidential election campaign, Donald Trump claimed to speak for the working class. But at the same time he demonized immigrant workers. His administration has continued to expand raids and deportations of workers without papers, slandering them as “criminals.” His aim is to terrorize and push a section of the working class into a second-class, pariah status. Immigration and Customs Enforcement roundups have been unleashed by the administrations of both parties. They hit record highs this summer.
The U.S. rulers’ are not out to deport all undocumented workers, but to keep them living in fear so they don’t challenge the bosses’ efforts to super exploit them. But raids targeting meatpacking workers and others in Kansas last month spurred thousands of workers and youth to protest. They stood in solidarity with their co-workers and neighbors, demanding a halt to ICE’s sweeps.
US rulers’ foreign policy is bipartisan
Many workers recognize with growing apprehension that the spread of trade wars, border conflicts and the growing arms race among capitalist powers today threaten a third world war.
Both the Democratic and Republican parties back expansion of the U.S. military. U.S. foreign policy is bipartisan, to counter the rising challenge Washington faces from Beijing, to advance the U.S. rulers’ hold in the Middle East and extend their domination in “their” Western Hemisphere, and especially to overturn Cuba’s socialist revolution.
Democrats share the Trump administration’s aim of advancing the U.S. rulers’ predatory interests. Sen. Chuck Schumer says Trump’s war on Iran has handed Tehran “leverage over the Strait of Hormuz” and “made the United States’ position worse.” He complains, “We’re in much worse shape when it comes to all the oil,” as if it belonged to Washington! When he says “we” he is talking about the U.S. capitalist class.
Only the Socialist Workers Party calls for the withdrawal of all U.S. forces and weaponry from the Middle East and defends Israel’s right to exist as a refuge for Jews. Its candidates explain the U.S. rulers’ wars arise from conflicts among the capitalist powers over redividing the world. Democrats and Republicans alike are ready to sacrifice millions of workers as cannon fodder. That will not change whichever capitalist party controls Congress.
The Socialist Workers Party is convinced working people have the capacity to change the world. That’s why they offer working people something to vote for — and to join the fight to replace capitalist rule with a government of our own.