Yesterday, extreme right-winger Flávio Bolsonaro conceded defeat to Lula da Silva in the Brazilian presidential election.
Bolsonaro had originally reacted to the defeat by claiming it was fraudulent and would be contested to the limit.
In fact, Bolsonaro’s surprise admission followed minutes after US president Donald Trump sent out the message that the US would not be intervening to overturn the decisive vote.
With Trump pulling the rug from under him, Bolsonaro was left with no option but to cave in and hope that the Brazilian courts will drop the numerous charges of corruption that have been levelled against him and his family.
Meanwhile, in Israel, prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu faced a cliff-edge election yesterday.
Despite giving his ‘complete and total’ support to the genocidal Netanyahu, it has been widely reported that Trump turned down all the pleas from the Israeli prime minster for the US to bomb Iran in the run-up to the election in order to shore up his support.
Trump has insisted that there will be no resumption of US military strikes against Iran until after the midterm elections on November 3.
These elections are clearly of more pressing concern and are causing panic in Trump and amongst his administration.
Midterm election in the US take place two years after the presidential elections and determine which party – Republican or Democrat – controls Congress.
The Republican Party holds a majority in both the House of Representatives and Senate which has given Trump the power to carry out wars, both military and economic, across the world on behalf of US imperialism.
The sense of total impunity that Trump has is being shattered by the increasing refusal of US workers to accept having their lives destroyed for the benefit of the multi-billionaire bankers, hedge fund owners and AI tech moguls.
Workers, especially rural workers in the previously staunch Republican states, are reeling under the soaring cost of petrol and diesel caused by the deeply unpopular war launched by the US and Israel on Iran.
With the price of diesel, a key factor in farming, soaring by nearly 70% along with a surge in farm bankruptcies as a result of Trump’s tariff war against the rest of the world, the prospect of the Republicans losing the states of Kansas and Texas is becoming real.
Alongside this, US workers have been pummelled by Trump’s ‘big beautiful bill’ introduced last year.
Among the cuts were the largest in health care in American history with over $1 trillion cut from Medicaid and the Affordable Care Act to provide the money for tax breaks to billionaires and corporations.
Trump has been engaged in a frantic round of rallies across mid-west states using his usual mixture of boasts and lies, along with a racist attack on the Democratic nominee for Senate in Michigan Dr Abdul El-Sayed, in a desperate attempt to rally support for his crumbling administration.
Defeat for the Republicans on November 3 will not end the US imperialist war on Iran or the war waged by the American ruling class against workers and youth.
The Democrats are also a party of the American bourgeoisie and have supported all Trump’s wars while restricting their complaints to the inevitable disastrous economic consequences.
Trump and his multi-billionaire supporters thought that he had the potential to become the dictator, able to make the working class pay for the economic crisis and reconquer the world for exploitation by US imperialism.
Defeat at the hands of Iran has shattered this dream while the mass opposition of US workers and youth to imperialist wars opens up the path to resolve the crisis.
American workers and youth have shown they will never sacrifice their lives to keep capitalism from collapsing into bankruptcy.
The only way forward is to force the US trade unions to break with the Democrats and call an indefinite general strike to bring down Trump and go forward to a workers government that will nationalise the banks, large industries and corporations building a socialist planned economy!