As anticipated in Part I, Democrats have swept the midterms. Some are calling it a blue wave – or a 'bluenami'.
Two years ago, Republicans captured the presidency and both chambers of Congress, prompting questions about whether Democrats could recover. After these midterms, the same question hangs over MAGA.
To understand these sharp swings in US politics, we must trace an economic transformation that began roughly five decades ago.
During the Cold War, private enterprise became central to the US argument against the Soviet Union's command economy. Thatcher and Reagan became the defining symbols of a model promising prosperity through lower taxes, deregulation, privatisation, and global trade.
As a result, businesses started moving production to countries with lower costs. The economic transformation extended beyond Reagan, continuing across successive administrations.
Clinton signed landmark legislation implementing NAFTA in 1993 and normalising trade relations with China in 2000. Thus, the emerging settlement was broader than one party.
As reliance on free markets and global trade deepened, US manufacturing employment fell from 19.6 million in 1979 to 12.8 million in 2019. For workers like the 'Average Joe', losing a well-paid factory job meant losing a route to home ownership and a secure family life.
To make matters worse, when a factory moved production offshore, the consequences spread throughout the town.
Job losses reduced household spending and eroded the local tax base. Shops lost customers, businesses faced weaker demand, and public finances came under pressure.
Detroit became one of the clearest examples of this disruption.
Meanwhile, the new economy ushered in by the internet boom offered opportunities, but access was uneven. A displaced factory worker could not automatically become a software engineer.
The expanding service economy, meanwhile, offered work such as ride-hailing and delivery, but these jobs did not match the pay and benefits of the secure factory positions that had supported workers like Joe before the industrial upheavals of the 1980s.
The free market's promise of prosperity for America became a story of peril for ordinary Americans like Joe.
Meanwhile, US economic growth kept on marching ahead, but its gains became increasingly concentrated among upper-income households. America's growth became K-shaped, with gains concentrated at the top.
The middle class’s share of household income fell from 62% in 1970 to 43% in 2022, while the Gini index of income inequality rose from 0.394 to 0.488. America became richer in this economy while ordinary Americans felt increasingly insecure and left behind.
Joe now wonders what happened to the prosperity the free-market economy promised him. Has the American dream died for him?
Trump offered to resurrect the American dream. He blamed failed political leadership, bad trade deals, and uncontrolled immigration.
His promise was to restore national control and bring offshore manufacturing back to America.
Trump's explanation gave Joe a visible target.
While his own circumstances deteriorated, he saw immigrants earning a living as software engineers, drivers, and delivery workers. He blamed their advancement for his decline, confusing an apparent correlation with causality.
His lost industrial livelihood became an argument against immigration, helping MAGA turn economic frustration into political support.
Now that Trump is well into his second term, Joe seems to be disillusioned with the vision Trump offered.
Border enforcement has tightened: CBP reported fewer than 99,000 southwest-border apprehensions in 2026. Trump has imposed tariffs to defend American production.
Yet Joe is still waiting for these actions to ease the pressure on his household budget.
Joe's frustration was real. But the promise that tighter borders and restored national control would rebuild his economic security had already been tested in Britain.
Brexit campaigners linked control over immigration and borders with the promise of national renewal – a message very similar to MAGA's.
However, a decade after the referendum, Brexit's promised economic renewal remains contested. The Office for Budget Responsibility estimates that the new trading relationship will leave long-run productivity 4% lower than if Britain had remained in the EU.
Rather than delivering its promised economic renewal, Brexit added another hurdle to improving ordinary Britons' living standards.
Brexit offered MAGA a clear warning: tighter borders and claims of restored sovereignty do not, by themselves, rebuild wages, bargaining power or household security.
A durable course correction therefore required sharing the gains from free-market growth more equitably among ordinary citizens. This is where Brexit got it wrong and this is where MAGA could not understand the core issue.
The midterm results may mark the beginning of the end for MAGA. It may now face the same turmoil that engulfed Britain's Conservatives after Brexit: successive leadership changes, internal divisions, and a party struggling to offer ordinary citizens a credible path forward.
This leads us to where Brexit is now.
After years of turmoil, British voters removed the Conservatives – the party that delivered Brexit – in the 2024 general election.
Britain's new prime minister, Andy Burnham, has reopened discussions about closer integration with the EU, including the possibility of rejoining in the longer term. He has also proposed reversing Thatcher-era policies, rebuilding middle-class security, and putting affordability high on the agenda.
A grand reset of British politics is on the horizon.
The same course correction may be the need of the hour in America.
If America is to reset its politics, it must increase ordinary Americans' share of prosperity and put the Average Joe at the centre of its priorities – not Israel, not Iran, not immigrants, but Joe.
As long as US politicians measure success by GDP growth alone while overlooking household insecurity, they will continue to face a reckoning at the ballot box.
Ignoring ordinary Americans now carries a heavy political price. Democrats paid that price in 2024.
Some questioned whether the party could recover, but the progressive camp offered a fresh message centred on ordinary Americans' economic frustrations in these midterms, helping revive the Democrats' appeal.
Meanwhile, MAGA has faced its own reckoning and risks following the path of Britain's Brexit-era Conservatives if it continues to overlook ordinary Americans' plight.
Now one question dominates US politics: Can progressives offer Joe a way out and deliver on their midterm promises, or will they become the next movement to disappoint him?
That is the question for Part III.
About the Author: Waqas M Awan is a Luxembourg-based corporate professional and the author of Power of Sage: An Anti-thesis to Machiavellian Prince. He holds an MBA and an LLM and has held senior finance roles at S&P 500 companies and Big4. He writes on economics, geopolitics, and power systems.
