US Political Balance of Power: Liberation Road's Main Political Report

Our assessment of key domestic political developments over the past three years

As part of our 14th triennial Congress, Liberation Road adopted our 2022 - 2025 Main Political Report on June 1st, 2025. We will release the sections of the report in six installments over the coming weeks, prior to publishing the full analysis as a single, integrated report. This is part three: “Balance of Power in the US Political Context.” We will add links to the other sections as they are released:

1. Executive Summary

2. International Developments

3. Balance of Power in the US Political Context

4. The New Confederate Front

5. The Multiracial Pro-Democracy United Front

6. State of the People’s Movements

SECTION 3: BALANCE OF POWER IN THE US POLITICAL CONTEXT

3.1 The New Confederacy: The American Form of Fascism

A decade ago Liberation Road identified what we called the “New Confederacy” as “the main enemy in this period” and “the dominant force shaping the US political terrain in this moment.” We argued that it was “composed of the most reactionary factions of capital allied with racist/nativist, right-wing populists,” and described the Republican Party as “the political expression of this alliance.” This analysis has been confirmed by the further growth and consolidation of the New Confederacy, its merger with the MAGA movement, and its complete takeover of the Republican Party as its political instrument.

We call this coalition the New Confederacy to highlight the American lineages of its DNA: elite rule, violent exclusion, and rebellion against egalitarian democracy. The Confederacy was built on the defense of slavery, justified by a belief in racial hierarchy, patriarchal authority, and the sanctity of private property. Similarly, today’s New Confederacy is a coordinated effort to capture and transform the government—and broader society—into something that serves the interests of a narrow, privileged few. Then, as now, its leaders used the language of “freedom” to defend systems of domination. MAGA populists echo the Confederacy’s nativism and defense of white identity, Christian supremacists revive its theocratic order and repressive gender roles, and right-libertarian capitalists replicate its plantation logic through modern forms of corporate control and labor exploitation.

Opposed to this dangerous reactionary front is a big-tent coalition, which we have termed the Multi-Racial Pro-Democracy United Front. The latter is a loose and uneasy coalition, including the advanced forces of the people’s movements and a growing progressive political faction, but still led by centrist forces, as represented by the Establishment wing of the Democratic Party.

The following section outlines important developments and dynamics concerning the balance of power between these two contending fronts at the national, state, and local level. But it also explores the changing contours of attempts by each front to secure a new alternative hegemonic project to replace neoliberalism—a process that is still open and indeterminate. Following this, the subsequent sections explore internal changes and mutations within each front.

3.2 Federal Balance of Power: Post 2024 Election

3.2.1 The New Trump Era: MAGA unleashed

Liberation Road has argued that the New Confederacy is attempting a “slow-motion coup” to cement America as a fascist authoritarian state. The November 2024 election brought it dangerously closer to achieving this objective. Trump’s threats to deploy military units against civilians, construct mass detention camps, weaponize the judiciary to attack his “enemies,” and invoke broad emergency powers are all signals of an attempted authoritarian takeover.

Narrow House and Senate margins will place some hurdles on the GOP’s legislative agenda. We already saw in the last session that the unruly and divided Republican House majority had trouble unifying to pass legislation, and a shrunken majority will pose even greater challenges. More importantly, the lack of a 60-vote, filibuster-proof supermajority will constrain the GOP in the Senate, as most major legislation will require the support of at least seven Democrats, as well as the full GOP Caucus. However, Senate Republicans can pass tax, spending, and debt limit bills through budget reconciliation; we can thus expect dramatic cuts to taxes and, perhaps, entitlement programs.

But Trump will face few formal checks on his use of executive powers. In 2016 Trump was caught off guard; this time he and his transition team are more prepared. Trump has used the powers of the executive immediately and aggressively, and we must be prepared to counteract grave abuses that could escalate the slide into fascism. We have already seen him attempt to increase his control over the Department of Justice, the intelligence community, and the US military—precisely the components of the repressive state apparatus whose loyalty would be needed in order to facilitate a broader authoritarian takeover.

3.2.2 Not realignment, but reaction

Despite Trump’s claims to a popular mandate, the November 2024 election did not represent a fundamental political realignment. Realigning elections are ones that bring sharp changes in the regional and demographic power base of party coalitions, resulting in a new political power structure that lasts for decades. Examples include the 1932 general election, when Roosevelt won 89% of the electoral college and gained his party 101 seats in the House and 12 in the Senate, ushering in a period of Keynesian hegemony that lasted until the crises of the 1970s; and the 1980 election, when Reagan won 91% of electoral college votes and gained his party 34 seats in the House and 12 in the Senate, ushering in the era of neoliberalism.

In contrast, Trump’s win—while wide—was shallow. Although he swept the seven swing states, he secured less than 50% of the popular vote and his margin of victory was one of the lowest in US history. His party gained only four Senate seats (on terrain considered very unfavorable to Democrats) and lost two net seats in the House. While the breadth of MAGA’s victory reflects the structural crisis of neoliberalism, its weakness shows that MAGA has not yet consolidated a new hegemonic bloc around an alternative political power structure.

Rather than the electoral realignments of 1932 or 1980, the better parallel for this attempted takeover is Redemption—the reactionary movement by post-Civil War Southern elites to “redeem” the South and overturn mulitracial democracy through propaganda, voter suppression, state repression, and paramilitary vigilantism, the climax of which was the violent 1898 coup in Wilmington, North Carolina. We should recall that Trump himself facilitated an attempted coup in the 2020 elections, the results of which he continues to deny, and has faced no repercussions for these actions due to legal delays and his successful right-wing stacking of the courts.

3.2.3 A fascist ruler… but not yet fascist rule

While MAGA forces have won trifecta control of the federal government, they have not yet consolidated a hegemonic bloc around their social, political, and economic agenda. Many of their ideas are deeply unpopular, and the “common sense” remains highly contested. With full control of the levers of the federal government, they may be able to impose major portions of their agenda by force and fiat, but without the consent of key social forces, they will not be able to consolidate their control.

Nevertheless, the components of this attempted right-wing takeover bear the key characteristics of fascism, including centralized autocracy, militarism, forcible suppression of opposition, belief in a natural social hierarchy, and suppression of individual interests to a perceived notion of the national good. There has been a tendency to view the politics, ideology, and program of both Donald Trump and the broader MAGA movement as erratic, incoherent and unserious. To call these “fascist” is to insist that we take the right’s attempts to cohere a new hegemonic bloc—as they do—deadly seriously. This does not mean that their project will succeed, but it does mean that we must adequately understand what they are trying to construct if we are to defeat it.

3.2.4 Patronal Autocracy

If the New Confederacy is able to consolidate an authoritarian regime, it will likely be a “hybrid” regime-type that centralizes power in the executive branch of the state, but maintains some formal features of democracy, including semi-competitive elections, nominal (if weak) civil liberties, a legal political opposition, and the absence of widespread, overt state terror. Some call this “competitive authoritarianism” or “illiberal democracy.” A simpler term is “autocracy,” understood as a stable regime type distinct from both democracy and dictatorship.

A Trump-led autocratic regime will be patrimonial, which refers to regimes where a corrupt “patron” governs the country as an extension of his business interests and those of a network of loyalists, using discretional rewards and punishments to establish unconstrained, informal power over the state, economy, and civil society. The nominally ruling party does not actually govern, but rather rubber-stamps decisions made by the patron's “court,” an informal body of close decision-makers. As a patronal autocrat, Trump’s approach to governance is ideologically cynical, with politics instrumentalized primarily to advance his direct self-interest. However, there are deeply committed ideological factions within his coalition, which we discuss in Section 4.

The complexity of the United State’s federal political system and the breadth and depth of US civil society pose many impediments to the New Confederacy’s ability to consolidate autocracy. Absent exogenous shocks, pro-democracy forces will have many opportunities to refuse, resist, and contest autocracy; defend democracy; and coordinate a social and political counter-offensive. We outline these efforts in depth in our 2025-2028 Strategic Orientation.

3.2.5 On the Use of "Fascism" in Our Analysis

We recognize that within the Left—and even within sectors of our own organization—there is ongoing debate about whether "fascism" is the appropriate term to describe the current trajectory of the US right wing. Some argue that the term risks confusion, either by invoking historical analogies that don’t fully fit, or by failing to resonate with broad sectors of the working class.

Too often, objections to the fascist label have focused on overly precise comparisons with the specific fascisms of 1930s Europe, forgetting that the US has its own native-born forms of fascism (which Hitler and other European fascists looked to for inspiration). Like capitalism itself, fascism exists nowhere in the abstract, but rather only in particular social formations, conditioned by historically evolved characteristics. Fascism in the US will not come with brown shirts and jack boots, but carrying a cross and cloaked in a Confederate flag.

We use the term “fascism” not as rhetoric, but as a strategic clarification:

• To name the qualitative shift from authoritarian conservatism to a counter-revolutionary project aimed at dismantling multiracial democracy.

• To highlight the fusion of reactionary state power, extralegal violence, and revanchist mass politics.

• To foreground the necessity of a united front strategy capable of blocking this advance—not through moral appeals, but through organized power.

Whether or not every comrade or allied formation adopts this term, what matters most is shared clarity on the nature of the threat: that we face a coordinated attempt to impose minority rule through a racialized, gendered, and economically restrictive authoritarian project. Our analysis—and our strategy—flows from that understanding.

3.3 Federal Balance of Power: 2021-2024

Understanding the political terrain of the Biden era is crucial to making sense of the current moment and the conditions under which Trump has returned to power. This was not a period of paralysis, but of contradictory motion: Democrats made limited but significant advances in economic stimulus and industrial policy, while the far right made major gains through judicial assaults on abortion rights, racial justice, and federal regulatory authority. Looking back at this contested and volatile period is essential to grasp how the structural openings for Trumpism were widened by the contradictions, limits, and missed opportunities of the preceding period.

3.3.1 The Biden Era: Intensifying Stalemate

Biden’s presidency was characterized by an intensification of the strategic stalemate at the federal level. Until the end of 2022, Democrats held a narrow governing trifecta but were constrained by razor-thin legislative margins. In November 2022 Democrats narrowly lost the House but held the Senate, overperforming expectations for midterm elections, which typically see a large backlash against the party in power. In effect, the expected “red backlash” against Biden was largely balanced by a “blue backlash” against MAGA—a double-sided movement that reflected an ambiguous, contradictory conjuncture in which both sides intensified struggle.

After 2022, Biden was compelled to govern through executive order, continuing a long-term trend towards increasing use of the executive to bypass a legislature ever more frequently gridlocked by partisan polarization. This dynamic allows for changes that are potentially deep but also precarious, as sweeping reforms instituted by one administration can just as easily be swept away by the next. Alongside and counterbalancing such “governance through the executive,” this period saw an unprecedented rise in “governance through the judiciary,” as a super-majority far-right Supreme Court moved increasingly aggressively on multiple fronts.

“Stalemate” should not be confused with “paralysis.” In fact both sides made major forays and advances in this period, as Democrats passed what was arguably the most significant stimulus package since FDR, while the far-right Supreme Court secured strategic victories on long-term right-wing goals—most notably the overturning of Roe v. Wade. Yet these victories proved contradictory for both fronts, as major advances on some fronts were matched by defeats on others, while each side confronted intensifying backlash precisely over those areas where they had advanced the most decisively.

3.3.2 Democratic Maneuvers: Bidenomics

In its initial version, Biden’s economic agenda proposed a potentially decisive break with neoliberalism in favor of levels of federal investment not seen since the FDR era. This was a sea change for Democrats, reflective of the increased strength of the party’s left, but also of an emerging new consensus within the still-dominant centrist wing that neoliberal trade and economic policies had eroded Democratic support, necessitating a change of course to strengthen the power of the party’s working-class voting base.

As first formulated in “Build Back Better,” this new governing agenda had three parts: 1) historic infrastructure spending and an industrial jobs program focused on green energy projects, 2) major investments in education and the care economy, and 3) higher taxes on corporations and the wealthy. Collectively, these policies sought to tackle widening inequality from both sides: reducing the power of capital through increased taxation and regulation, while increasing that of labor through increased federal spending and full employment policies.

Ultimately, only the first, infrastructure component of “Build, Back, Better” passed in its entirety, while other components were significantly weakened in the face of major challenges. These included intense pushback from corporate interests, opposition from the Democratic Party’s shrinking but disproportionately powerful conservative “Blue Dog” wing, and soaring inflation rates that quickly dominated media discourse, shifting public focus from tackling inequality to tamping down (labor) costs. Meanwhile strong support from a coalition of unions, environmental organizations, and advocacy groups was not matched by mass mobilization at the base.

Curbed in his initial efforts, Biden sought new means to pursue full employment strategies and government-led industrial policy, but with a changed coalition, focus, and framing. Ideologically, the rationale for increased government intervention shifted from a left-populist defense of the middle class to a right-Keynesian defense of national interests. Practically, government investment increasingly concentrated on the military and technological sectors, rather than education and social services. Gradually the contours of Bidenomics began to assume the form of an uneasy new compromise, not between labor and capital, but between capitalists and the state. Government would play an increased role in the economy, but through corporate incentives rather than regulation—a fiscal policy of all carrots, no sticks. Full employment policies could be pursued, but within a persistently two-tiered economy where job growth remained split between high-wage and low-wage sectors.

The contradictory results of Bidenomics reflected the challenges of trying to impose mid-20th century Keynesian policies on the altered terrain of the 21st. Economically, both the chronic weakness of the global economy and the (relatively) weakened position of the US within it narrowed the window within which reforms were tolerable to the corporate class, while gridlock and paralysis narrowed the political margin of maneuver. Politically, the weakness and fragmentation of US social and labor movements meant Biden’s initially bold agenda lacked a social base capable of pushing past these barriers. This reflected a key difference between the context of the proposed “Green New Deal” and that of the original New Deal of the FDR era. The latter had been fueled by a strong, growing, and increasingly militant workers movement that it tried to both appease and contain. In contrast, Biden’s agenda was formulated as a response to the historic weakness of the working class, which it sought to partially restore and rebuild.

Meanwhile, Biden’s expansionary policies confronted one of the classic problems of mid-20th-century social democracy, as increased wages and welfare expenditures barely managed to keep up with inflation. The bargaining position of workers was indeed strengthened, and the labor movement saw the biggest upsurge in union activity in at least a generation (although union density failed to increase). But these gains were insufficiently attributed to Biden, while the pains of steeply rising costs were pinned on him, producing a counter-reaction that contributed to Democrats’ 2024 electoral defeat.

3.3.3 MAGA Maneuvers: The Supreme Court

In this same period, an expanded, emboldened, and increasingly radicalized right-wing Supreme Court majority issued a series of sweeping decisions that abandoned settled law, stripped away workers’ and civil rights, and laid the legal groundwork for the creation of an autocratic “illiberal democracy.” In 2022 the Court reversed Roe v. Wade (1973), ending nearly 50 years of federal abortion rights. This decision returned the power to regulate abortion to individual states, leading to a patchwork of state laws, with many conservative states enacting near-total bans. The Court also overturned the Chevron doctrine, a 40-year old precedent that granted federal agencies regulatory power and discretion to interpret ambiguous laws. And it ended affirmative action in college admissions, striking down a 60-year old program to redress systemic racial discrimination.

Simultaneously, the Court moved to expand the rights of Christians and gun owners, striking down a bump stock ban and other gun regulations, declaring school prayer a constitutional right, and expanding the “right” of private citizens to discriminate against LGBTQ+ communities on the basis of religious belief. It also strengthened the personal power of the presidency, expanding presidential immunity from criminal prosecution, but otherwise moved consistently and aggressively to curb the policy-making and regulatory powers of the executive branch and of federal agencies.

Collectively, these decisions increased the power of the judiciary over the other branches of the federal government, narrowed the overall extent of federal power (but increased the personal power of the presidency), expanded corporate power while entrenching the privileges of wealth and whiteness, and restricted the powers and freedoms of oppressed genders and nationalities.

While the right-wing majority succeeded in reshaping key aspects of American law, it also intensified debates about the role of the judiciary. Calls for court reform intensified, while trust in the courts dropped to historic lows. Backlash against these decisions contributed to Democratic overperformance in the midterm elections, but failed to produce an equivalent effect in the 2024 general election, even as voters continued to pass ballot initiatives protecting or expanding abortion access, public investment, and workers’ and civic rights.

3.4 State Level Balance of Power

3.4.1 Widening divides between red and blue states

This period saw intensified struggle at the level of state government. According to Michael Podhorzer, the political polarization between states has hit its highest level since 1932.¹ After a period of convergence across the 20th century, the states appear less and less like a unified nation than a federated republic of two very different nations, restoring something like the sectional split that divided the country in the antebellum period and the era of Jim Crow. Federal politics increasingly mirrors the fault lines of state governments. The parties’ federal House and Senate caucuses have become more regionally sorted than at any time since 1932.

Demographically, “red” states grew increasingly rural while “blue” states are increasingly metropolitan, mirroring an ongoing generalized trend of urban-rural polarization. Blue state residents are wealthier and more educated, with more high-wage job opportunities, while red states have a greater concentration of low-wage employment, but also a lower cost of living. Blue states are overall more racially diverse; however, the majority of Black people live in red states, and Latine communities are also concentrated in the Southwest and South.

The few contested “purple” states were of two kinds: in the Midwest, formerly “blue wall” states like Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin presented opportunities for the New Confederacy amid declining population rates and union density, while in the Sunbelt, changing demographics produced new opportunities for pro-democracy forces in states like Georgia, Nevada, North Carolina, and Arizona.

3.4.2 MAGA trifectas reached quantitative limits

The New Confederacy has long pursued a state-based strategy focused on seizing governing trifectas at the state level and using them to advance its agenda, rapidly expanding the number of states under its control, particularly after 2010. In the most recent period, however, this strategy reached a quantitative limit. At 23, the number of states under one-party Republican rule remains unchanged from 2020 and has slightly declined from a high-water mark of 26 in the 2016-18 period.

Within those quantitative limits, the New Confederacy has increased its position qualitatively, implementing anti-democratic policies such as gerrymandering that entrench its control over state government while strengthening its position at the national level (given the strong role the states play in federal elections). Simultaneously, the New Confederacy has aggressively pursued a far right policy agenda in states under its control, while working to restrict the ability of both federal and local governments to chart a different course. From abortion access, to LGBQT+ rights, to social services, to labor rights, to racial equality, red states have increasingly rolled back or undermined the gains made by workers, the oppressed nationalities, and oppressed gender people across the 20th century.

However, in many cases the aggressive policies pursued by the New Confederacy are well to the right of a majority of the population in red states—an overextension that has produced substantial pushback. This is particularly notable around abortion access, with a record number of abortion-related ballot initiatives introduced at the state level since the overturning of Roe v. Wade, with large majorities of voters opting to protect or expand abortion access when offered the possibility to do so, even in deep-red states like Kansas.

3.4.3 Democrats began to catch up on state-based strategy

Pro-democracy forces have begun to catch up to the New Confederacy’s state-based strategy. In 2016, Democrats controlled only 6 governing trifectas; this number almost tripled to a high mark of 17 following the 2022 midterms, declining to 16 in 2024 as Democrats lost trifecta rule in Michigan. In states under their control, Democrats have likewise pursued a bolder and more ambitious policy agenda, contributing to the widening difference between conditions in blue and red states. In some cases, this was in response to aggressive moves by the New Confederacy at the state or national level—for instance, measures to expand and protect abortion access and gender-affirming care.

In other cases, pro-democracy forces took advantage of newly achieved governing trifectas to proactively advance a bold agenda. The most ambitious example may be Minnesota, which used a narrow one-seat legislative majority to pass a raft of progressive legislation in just four months, including 12 weeks paid parental leave, child tax credits, free public college tuition for most families, free lunch in schools, stronger support for unionization, universal drivers license access regardless of citizenship status, and an expanded public healthcare option. These sweeping achievements were made possible, not just by a governing trifecta, but because of a decade-long state-based organizing strategy by a coalition of independent political organizations and strong, progressive unions.

3.5 Local Balance of Power

This period saw an intensification of struggle over local electoral power, as formerly low-salience offices like county clerks became sites of intense contestation and polarization. This was particularly notable around school board races, as “Critical Race Theory” and the rights of trans youth in schools became fiercely contested, as well as around offices that had control over the running, monitoring, and certifying election results.

This renewed focus on local electoral power mirrored an overall intensification of political polarization at all levels, but also compensated for diminished opportunity at the state and national levels. With federal politics at a stalemate and the vast majority of states under relatively static one-party rule, local races offered both fronts opportunities to make quantitative electoral advances in a context where this was otherwise increasingly difficult.

Urban and rural regions continued a long-term trend toward increasing geographic polarization on partisan political lines, notwithstanding renewed focus from pro-democracy forces on small town and rural areas (where the same small-town/rural divides played out in miniature). Metropolitan suburbs remained fiercely contested, with increased focus on exurbs and so-called “countrypolitan” counties proximate to major metros but possessing a rural character.

Blue cities in red states faced intensifying struggle and repression from state governments. In Texas, for instance, the state legislature passed a “death star bill” that blocked local governments from regulating in eight different areas, including labor, finance, and the environment, although this has subsequently faced legal challenges. To a lesser extent, parallel struggles played out between red localities and blue state governments, as in California Governor Newsom’s struggles with the Temecula Valley Unified School District Board over implementation of the new state curriculum

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1. Michael Podhorzer, “The Two Nations of America,” Weekend Reading (December 3, 2023)