A suitable framework should help us predict what will happen, not just explain what is happening now. Over the past year, I have argued that the Trump administration is neither a fascist movement state nor a typical right-wing government. Instead, it functions as a Bonapartist state in its structure and operates in a patrimonial manner. [1] In Bonapartism, the executive branch acts independently from a divided ruling class during a crisis. Patrimonialism turns public office into a personal domain, where loyalty is more important than rules, and the line between public and private becomes blurred, as Weber described. [2] If this view is correct, it implies a clear prediction for the 2026 midterms: the governing bloc is likely to interfere in the elections systematically, not merely episodically, because electoral defeat would threaten the networks of power on which it depends.
This prediction follows from the structure of patrimonial rule, which differs from the assumptions common in many democracy-watchdog reports. In a legal-rational government, officials keep their jobs regardless of who wins, patronage is limited and legal, and losing an election is not a personal threat. In a patrimonial regime, however, officials serve at the leader’s will and risk losing everything if the leader is removed. Their wealth and power depend on political favors, special exemptions, and deals that their opponents could expose or prosecute. [3] The loss of an election is not simply a political defeat but a personal and financial threat to those in power. That is why the administration appears to view the midterms as a risk to be controlled, undermined, or even canceled if necessary, rather than as a fair contest. Listing each scandal or abuse and asking whether it qualifies as authoritarianism misses the point. These actions are better understood not as isolated episodes but as parts of a system with a discernible strategic logic. In just the first half of 2026, the Justice Department demanded full, unredacted voter rolls, including Social Security numbers and license numbers, from the states. When 29 states and the District of Columbia refused, the department sued them to compare the rolls with a Homeland Security database that has often mistakenly flagged eligible voters. [4] The president laid off the leaders of the Election Assistance Commission, the only federal agency focused on election administration, months before the vote. [5] FBI agents raided the Fulton County election operations center in January. [6] The president has openly said he directed federal law enforcement to intervene in California’s vote count. [7] The administration tried to restrict mail voting by executive order but was blocked by the courts and has promised to release selected intelligence documents to spread fraud claims before November. [8] The administration has also presented federal law enforcement and ICE as election-related instruments. [9] Considered individually, these actions can appear to be a list of scandals. Viewed together, however, they suggest a coherent strategy with three goals that even watchdog groups have begun to identify: to mislead voters about whether the system can be trusted, to disrupt how it works, and to use the resulting chaos to challenge unfavorable results. [10] Liberal analysis often struggles to explain why the administration would pursue this course even when it may damage Republican electoral prospects, including among suburban voters the party needs. The patrimonial Bonapartism framework explains it: the interests of the party and the ruling group have split. At this stage, the survival of the governing apparatus appears to take precedence over the party’s broader electoral interests. Therefore, the prediction is not simple. First, the election is unlikely to be canceled outright. Patrimonial Bonapartism does not eliminate elections; it drains them of their substantive meaning. Since Louis Napoleon’s time, holding a vote has been central to this kind of rule. The governing bloc needs the election to occur so it can claim, challenge, or undermine the result as circumstances require. Second, interference is likely to focus on large, Democratic-run urban counties in key states. There, federal actions such as raids, subpoenas, and data requests can lower turnout, exhaust local officials, and create grounds for later challenges. Fulton County appears to have served as a test case. Third, the most important phase is likely to occur after November 3, not before. The demands for data, the release of intelligence documents, the firings at the Election Assistance Commission, and the lawsuits seem aimed at contesting, delaying, or blocking certification of results in enough places to affect control of the House. [11] The administration does not need to overturn the election outright. It only needs to make the outcome uncertain, then use the Justice Department, the courts, and state legislatures it has prepared over the past two years to manage the dispute. Fourth, and this is relevant for both pessimists and optimists, the interference is likely to succeed only in part. The patrimonial system is politically strong but operationally uneven. Appointing loyalists often produces poor administrative performance. The courts have already blocked the mail-ballot order and most lawsuits over voter rolls. States still control how elections are run, and most remain firm in defending their administrative authority. The most likely result is not a fully stolen election, but a damaged one: results will come late, be loudly disputed, be certified unevenly, and remain clouded by doubt. This outcome still benefits the governing bloc because when elections are always in question, the executive appears to be the only stable part of government. For patrimonial Bonapartism, instability is not merely a failure; it is part of how the system works. That conclusion points to a strategic implication many on the left may regard as unappealing. First, defending voting rights cannot be left to the Democratic Party or nonprofit groups, whose main tools are lawsuits and moral arguments and whose neglect of the working class helped create the current situation. Second, despite what some may think, voting rights are still worth fighting for. True working-class self-emancipation, as Draper described, requires a political space in which workers can organize openly. Losing even a flawed democratic system would be a setback, not a step forward. The real task is one the socialist movement keeps putting off: building independent working-class organizations that can defend democracy for their reasons, both at work and in the streets, not just in courtrooms. The administration’s plans for November are increasingly visible. The real question is whether anyone besides lawyers will be ready to respond. [^1]: Anthony P. Teso, “Patrimonial Bonapartism and the American State,” LINKS International Journal of Socialist Renewal ; and the subsequent exchange with Paul Le Blanc and Samuel Farber in LINKS and Against the Current. [^2]: Max Weber, Economy and Society , ed. Guenther Roth and Claus Wittich (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1978), vol. 2, ch. 12-13; Karl Marx, The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte (1852); Nicos Poulantzas, State, Power, Socialism (London: Verso, 1978). Dylan Riley and Robert Brenner discuss political capitalism as the material substrate of the patrimonial form in their article “Seven Theses on American Politics,” New Left Review 138 (2022); see my “Crisis Form and Class Strategy.” [^4]: “Trump Moves to Tighten Federal Control of Elections ahead of Midterms,” USA Today , July 2026, reporting on the Brennan Center’s litigation tracker. [^5]: “Trump Election Commission Firings Spark Interference Concerns ahead of Midterms,” The Hill , July 2026. [^6]: “Trump’s Sharpened Focus on Investigating Elections Raises Fears of Midterm Meddling,” News from the States , June 2026. [^7]: Ibid., reporting Trump’s June 23 Pennsylvania remarks on directing the U.S. Attorney against California’s count. [^8]: “Trump Election Task Force to Begin Releasing Classified Intel Documents,” MS NOW, July 2026; Protect Democracy, “Frequently Asked Questions about the 2026 Midterm Elections,” July 2026, regarding the blocked mail-voting order and the Watson ruling. [^9]: Protect Democracy, “Executive Override: How the Trump Administration Plans to Interfere with the 2026 Elections,” June 2026. [^10]: Ibid.; Campaign Legal Center, “Are President Trump and His Allies Laying the Groundwork to Undermine Our Elections?,” July 2026. [^11]: Protect Democracy, “Executive Override.” [^12]: States United Democracy Center, “The Threats to the Midterm Elections,” May 2026. -- Tony -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- Groups.io Links: You receive all messages sent to this group. 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