Blue tsunami: American reformist revolution and new progressivism

Bernie Sanders and AOC ‘Fighting Oligarchy’ tour 2025 revived Democratic base 

Some events act as a ‘tester’ of your determinant drives and motivating passions, manifested in spontaneous reflexes. I rejoiced at the Blue Tsunami (or ‘Blunami’ as American youngsters say) of the US Democrat victory in both Houses of Congress—though aware of the possible implications for Ukraine-Russia, and for Sri Lanka, of a much more liberal Congress. 

The Sri Lankan angle didn’t dampen my delight at the Democratic triumph because my core identity is as a human being and is therefore universalist, and I am convinced that on balance, this Democratic victory is also a victory more generally for humanity. I also think the Democrat tsunami provides a great example for Sri Lanka. 

When I emailed my old PhD supervisor and friend, Emeritus Professor John Kane, author of ‘Between Virtue and Power: The Persistent Moral Dilemma of US Foreign Policy’ (Yale University Press), about the Republican rout in both houses of Congress, he wrote back exultantly: “Can’t take my eyes away. It is much more devastating than even I’d hoped for!”.

As observed by CNN, come 3 January, 75% of the USA will be governed by the Democrats. 

Social democratic populism 

Sir Isaiah Berlin made a breakthrough in political discernment when he said that in politics we often have to make painful choices between desirable values or clusters of values. The three great ideals of the French Revolution—Liberty, Equality, Fraternity—are almost never available together in the real world. It is almost always a lacerating choice. I’d say we are lucky if any two of the three are together, but are luckiest when the three great values appear, however episodically or ephemerally, interlinked. 

The victory of this generation of US Democrats re-bundles the values of Liberty, Equality and Fraternity, even for a moment. 

The US mid-term election was a double revolution, a ‘revolution in the revolution’ (to echo Regis Debray). It was not only a victory over the right-wing, ultranationalist ruling Republican ideology and agenda of Donald Trump, but was also a seismic shift in the Opposition, within the US Democrats, away from the neoliberal, pro-war, pro-intervention, pro-Israeli paradigm of Hillary Clinton, towards the ideology and agenda of the Progressive Democrat Caucus chaired by Senator Bernie Sanders with Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and the ‘Squad’ as prominent members. 

Secondarily, it also reflects the catalytic role of the Democratic Socialist Alliance (DSA) which has seven members in the new Congress making it the largest number of self-declared Socialists in the history of the US Congress.  

85-year-old Bernie Sanders inspired a peaceful revolutionary change in public consciousness by combining moral-ethical leadership with sharply analytical socioeconomic critique in his decades-long career and tireless campaigning over the last ten years, all over the United States. The winning Democratic candidates are ‘Bernie’s Children’, who could ‘Feel the Bern’ back in 2016. At that election the Democratic party establishment sabotaged Bernie Sanders and threw the nomination to neoliberal Hillary Clinton, though the New York Times had editorialised that the only one who could possibly defeat Trump that year was Bernie because he, unlike Hillary, epitomised change and had fired-up the enthusiasm of youth and blue-collar voters. Trump decisively beat Hillary.

After Trump’s dramatic 2024 comeback despite the subversive 6 January 2020 siege of the Congress, defeating Kamala Harris who paid the price of Joe Biden’s enabling of Netanyahu’s Gaza genocide, the Democrats were demoralised and disorganised. In a heroic gesture rare in modern democratic politics, Bernie Sanders began a lone speaking tour of the USA, and was almost immediately joined by Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, leader of The Squad of young women who had waged an alternative campaign to beat the Democratic establishment, win party nominations and elections. AOC, a DSA member, was the youngest person ever to be elected to the US Congress. 

The multi-city, cross-country Bernie-AOC tour, billed ‘Fighting Oligarchy’, ran from February to April 2025. Drawing large crowds, it inspired the ‘No Kings’ protest movement of mid-2025 through to 2026. That was how the progressive mass movement of resistance to Trump was reignited, which revived, renovated and repositioned the Democratic party, shifting the tectonic plates of American consciousness and generating the Blue Tsunami.      

The open secret of the 2026 ‘Blue Tsunami’ is that the Democrats focused on economics—not in the sense of abstract macroeconomic statistics, but of the impact of economic policy on the lives and livelihoods of the common citizens, i.e. the “affordability” theme. The Democrats challenged the economic model pursued both by the Republicans and previous Democratic administrations, of the dominance of ‘the 1%’: the billionaires over the citizens. 

In the new Democratic slogans, we find the championing of “the Many over Money”. This is a progressive Populism within and compatible with liberal democracy and capitalism, but NOT neoliberal ‘free market fundamentalist’ capitalism, or simply ‘liberal capitalism’, to which it presents an alternative. The agenda of the Progressive Caucus has become the dominant discourse of the Democratic party and the winning wave. 

In the USA today, neoliberal economic doctrine has been rejected, with economic policies and models being assessed from the standpoint of outcome and impact; of material consequence: what they deliver to the people—whether they grind-down or uplift the majority of citizens. 

The ideology of the progressive Democrats, and even the pro-socialist agenda of the DSA-backed candidates, fall squarely within Social Democracy shared by Canada, Scandinavia, Spain, Brazil, Mexico, and UK Labour. 

The new progressivism could be defined as ‘populist Social Democracy’ or ‘Social Democratic populism’.    

The US, the birthplace of neoliberalism, was also the birthplace of a viable progressive counter to neoliberalism—not capitalism as such—by Nobel Prize-winners Joe Stiglitz and Paul Krugman and other renowned economists such as Robert Reich, Jeff Sachs and James Galbraith. 

Economic neoliberalism including ‘the Washington Consensus’ has now been discredited and dislodged in the metropolis, the citadel of world capitalism, and is sought to be replaced by a new pragmatic-progressive, people-centric economic philosophy from bottom-up.

While the proudest achievement of Trump was closing the borders to migration, his brutal exclusionary-nationalist gesture which should have reaped rich rewards Texas, especially along the bank of the Rio Grande which separates it from Mexico, didn’t decisively deliver votes. Moreover, in a stunning development, voters in conservative, rich Texas, pivoted against the massive AI data centers which have sprung up, consuming colossal amounts of water and threatening the ecology, and voted for progressive Democratic candidate James Talarico as Senator. He busted through an almost 40-year Republican fortress.      

Economic neoliberalism is being rejected throughout the Western hemisphere. Hundreds of thousands of students, workers and farmers in France, and a great many young people in Germany are demonstrating against the dominant economic doctrines that had made them and their families poorer while robbing them of the public services and educational facilities they had enjoyed. 

A major element of the Blue Tsunami is the victory of progressive Christianity/Christian progressivism over the colossally wealthy right-wing Evangelical variant. In his acceptance speech, the young Senator-elect from Texas, Harvard-educated James Talarico, a Presbyterian with a Master’s in Divinity who follows biblically-sourced Christian social teaching, said he entered politics inspired by Jesus Christ’s injunction to ‘love thy neighbour’. He denounces ‘Christian nationalism’, and hails Pope Francis and Pope Leo XIV as his heroes.    

In the fissure within Populism between on the one hand, Far-Right ultranationalism and on the other, Progressive Populism and Left Populism, the Far-Right ultranationalist Populist project has historically peaked and is in parabolic decline, from the defeat of Boris ‘Brexit’ Johnson through the (two) Bolsonaros and Netanyahu to the Trumpian Republicans. 

In Britain, the Conservatives and the Labour Right (Sir Keir Starmer) have been replaced by Manchester’s Andy Burnham whose hero is Neil Kinnock. Burnham has pledged to rebuild Britain’s public services and revive the economy’s public sector, rejecting ‘New Labour’ Tony Blair’s neoliberal economic roll-back of the State.    

US Republicans have begun to recoil from the Trumpian ultranationalist-militarist, pro-Netanyahu Right which doomed it to defeat and will probably bury it at the 2028 Presidential elections. JD Vance began the pushback. 

In France, Le Pen’s nationalist Right could win the presidency, but Jean-Luc Mélenchon is a viable Left candidate. His left bloc could prevail at the National Assembly elections, proving a powerful counterweight even if he loses the presidential race. 

America’s tectonic shift is an eye-opener for anyone but the most obdurate and ostrich-like: 

nBoth (a) economic neoliberalism and (b) ethnoreligious ultranationalism are in crisis and decline. 

nA new progressivism – social democratic populism—has won in the world’s leading power. As went New York City for Mamdani, so went the USA. 

Los Angeles has elected a Democratic mayor Nithya Raman, born in Kerala to a Tamil Brahmin family. She is America’s first woman mayor of South Asian origin. Both key mayors, Mamdani and Raman, are DSA-backed.   

Netanyahu falling? 

The Blue Tsunami broke the stranglehold of the hardline pro-Israeli AIPAC lobby over Jewish voters, Democratic voters and US politics. 72% of the Jewish vote went for Democrats. Senator-elect Dr Abdul El-Sayed of Michigan won a majority of Jewish votes despite his opposition to the Gaza genocide and support for Palestinian self-determination. 

In a rare favourable conjunction, the Democratic triumph came only days after Prime Minister Netanyahu was unable to win a majority in the Israeli election. The Netanyahu ‘brand’ and the Netanyahu-Trump axis no longer constitute a bridge but rather a wall between Israel and US voters. 

The US midterm revolt impacted Israel. Initially it was an impossible deadlock with General Gadi Eisenkot spurning backing from the Palestinian Arab MPs who formed a numerically strong group of 19 which held the balance. Netanyahu’s pressure and that of the smaller extremist Zionist parties lost its axiomatic veto-power when the Blue Tsunami made landfall. Post-midterm, Eisenkot did not rudely brush-off the Palestinian Arab parties’ offer of a safety-net. Therefore, he now has the written support of 67 MPs, tilting the balance. 

A former IDF Chief-of Staff whose son and nephews died in combat, Gadi Eisenkot is hardly a dove. He is author of the notorious Dahiya doctrine of disproportionate force against civilian infrastructure and areas. However, in their time, Menahem Begin, Yitzhak Rabin and Ariel Sharon were hawks but were persuaded into negotiated agreements and partial withdrawals by the US. The fall or retreat of Netanyahu and his religious-ultranationalist Government will end or pause the worst period in Israeli-Palestinian history, making possible a new equation with a Democratic administration in 2028 which can reopen negotiations with the Palestinians. 

An Eisenkot administration may reduce Zionist settler violence in the West Bank.  

Most crucially for the region and the world, a Democratic US President (2028) will return to some version of Obama’s JCPOA with Iran.   

Lessons for Lankan politics

The Democratic tsunami provides an inspiration and model for the Sri Lankan citizenry and the Opposition. 

In the face of an arrogant President, the dramatic positive changes in the USA became possible only because the main Opposition party transformed. We don’t have mid-term elections in Sri Lanka and the Provincial Council elections which could function as such are nowhere on the horizon. Any positive change becomes possible only if the main Opposition party/parties – SJB, SLPP—change for the better and campaign differently. The US Democrats have shown how, so there is no excuse not to.

I have long expressed the view that a basic reason for the deep failures in Sri Lankan politics has been the absence of the equivalent of the US Democrats. Things weren’t always so. I grew up with a paternal generation from center-left to the left, whose consciousness was an eclectic mélange of Western culture, left-liberal democracy and Third Worldism: they were JFK fans, students of JK Galbraith’s economics, and sympathisers of US Democrats and UK Labour while admiring supporters of Nehru, Mao, Ho Chi Minh, Fidel Castro and Che Guevara. Within the UNP, Ranasinghe Premadasa was an explicitly Rooseveltian New Dealer and social democrat. 

With unipolarity segueing into the 21st century though, Sri Lankan politics was polarised between economic neoliberals and ultranationalist New Right, both identifying with the US Republicans, UK Conservatives, and even Israel’s Netanyahu, albeit for different reasons.  

SJB chief economist Dr Harsha de Silva recently commended the AKD Govt for ‘economic stabilisation’, adding the caveat ‘stability is not enough, jobs are also needed’, while by contrast the US Democrats are light-years ahead (as Premadasa was, starting with his 1973 April Rotary Club Colombo West address), critiquing and rejecting economic ‘stability’ which destabilises the economy of the vast majority of citizens, households, neighbourhoods and public services, as no meaningful, real ‘economic stability’ at all! 

The SJB criticizes the managerial inexperience and tactics of JVP-NPP economic policy but the US ‘Blue Tsunami’ criticizes the outcomes and logic of the dominant, billionaire-benefitting, citizen-impoverishing economic strategy and model.  

The ‘Blue Tsunami’ brings two intellectual-ideological-paradigmatic imperatives: 

1.That the SJB shift from its neoliberal ‘Economic Blueprint’ which catastrophically lost it the 2024 election, to the progressive economics of the US Democrats. 

2.That the SLPP, SLFP and allies shift from the 2019 deviation of Trump-Netanyahu ultranationalism, back to its progressive center-left roots and draw inspiration from Bernie Sanders, AOC and Mamdani.  

There is no realistic economic model for Sri Lanka beyond and better than the social democratic capitalist model which America’s progressive Democrats are articulating—and currently implementing successfully in New York City under Mayor Mamdani.

Sri Lanka had its precursor of the US Democrats 2025-2026 re-generation. Not yet 50, Ranasinghe Premadasa stepped away from Dudley Senanayake’s sluggish UNP in defeat in 1970, and facing a Government with a 2/3rds majority ruling under Emergency, launched a political movement called the Citizens’ Front (‘Puravesi Peramuna’) in 1972-1973. That catalysed and commenced the transformation of the UNP into the dynamic populist-democratic party of the 1977 ‘Green Tsunami’. 

With that legacy, and the current example of the US Democrats, the SJB has every reason not to restrict its political activity to Parliament, and to amend its ideology that has failed to seize the public imagination.   

‘Come Together’ (John Lennon) 

‘March separately, strike together’ advocated Trotsky. Civic organisations and Opposition parties from the SJB to the FSP dissented separately and resisted sequentially, delaying the PSTA and Organised Crime Bills. 

However, History shows that no single party can successfully resist and roll-back dictatorship. 

In 1921 Lenin introduced the United Front concept at the Communist International’s 3rd Congress. The 1930s Anti-Fascist Popular Front incorporated liberal democrats, defenders of a democratic republic but not necessarily socialism. In China and Vietnam, the Anti-Imperialist United Front included the ‘national bourgeoisie’, patriotic capitalists who valued national sovereignty and opposed foreign invasion/domination. 

The parents of the Anti-Fascist Alliance came from Left and Right. Churchill catapulted to the prime ministership from backbencher because he had insisted for the longest time that Hitlerite fascism was the greatest global danger and western democracies should unite not only with each other but also with Stalin’s USSR. 

Chile's dictator Pinochet held a referendum to extend his rule and was defeated by ‘a concert of parties’ (‘Concertacion’) from Socialists to Christian Democrats. Pushed onto the defensive, he called a presidential election, losing to the Socialist candidate of a Center-Left coalition. Dictatorship died. 

(https://dayanjayatilleka.webflow.io/)