Thursday, December 12, 2024
Too many of my Democratic colleagues have been asking, “How could people vote for Donald Trump?” when, instead, they should be asking, “Why did people vote for Donald Trump?”
President-elect Trump won my congressional district by 18,000 votes. I managed to overcome that Democrat-to-Republican deficit, and won my district by 11,000 votes. In fact, it now looks like I’ll rank in the top three “overperforming” Democratic congressional candidates in the country. That also means that while most everyone who voted for Vice President Harris voted for me, another 20,000 people, voted for both Trump and me. I’m grateful to every voter who supported me, but we need to learn some lessons from the 20,000 ticket splitters.
When I talk to voters, it’s clear that they want me to continue to reject extremism. They like my embrace of common-sense solutions and my focus on border security.
They want me to keep working to restore the state and local tax deduction, they’re happy that I support law enforcement and promote bipartisanship, and they see that my team and I work hard to serve my constituents.
Elected officials need to listen to the people more than they listen to the “experts.” In my race to replace the expelled George Santos in February, many of the “experts” suggested that I shouldn’t be talking about tackling the immigration crisis, because it was a “Republican” issue. I’m glad I didn’t listen to them.
Now I have another message for my party. I think that Trump’s election, and our losses in the Senate and the House, happened because too many Americans are more worried about the far-left influence on the Democratic Party than they are about what Trump is going to do.
The public is fed up with an agenda of culture wars, identity politics and lack of focus on the basic issues of wages, benefits, public safety and people’s general quality of life.
The reality is that most Democrats have not embraced extremist positions of defunding the police, decriminalizing the border and identity politics. Yet the extremist voices get all the attention, and few Democrats are willing to speak out against them for fear of retaliation by “activists,” even though the majority of Americans do not agree with their positions.
Don’t get me wrong — the Republicans have plenty of extremists. You’ve heard of Marjorie Taylor Green and Lauren Bobert and Matt Gaetz? You don’t hear Republicans speaking out about the danger of guns and the lack of background checks. You don’t hear them talking about some of the more extreme things Trump says. Like many Democrats, few Republicans are willing to stand up to the extremists in their own party. But we lost this time, and I’m a Democrat, so I’ll focus on my side of the aisle. More important, I’m an American, so I’ll focus on America.
It’s time for members of my party, and all Americans, to have honest conversations about what we need to do to move our country forward without being intimidated by people who disagree.
There isn’t one simple answer, other than to listen to the people. People who make enough money to have a decent standard of living are fed up with the culture wars, the anarchy on college campuses, the refusal to even talk about transgender women competing in women’s sports, and other difficult, hot-button topics that swirl around social media these days.
Many more Americans in the middle class, or who aspire to be in the middle class, are concerned about those same issues, but they’re even more concerned about the need to make enough money so they can buy a house, have health insurance, educate their children and retire one day in security, without being scared.
I commit to continue to listen to my constituents. Right now, I think they’re concerned about the border. They want me to support law enforcement. They’re concerned about the cost of living. They want the state and local tax deduction back.
They want me to work hard, to try to solve problems and to try to make their lives better. They want me to work for the people and not for the party. They want me to fight against things that I think are wrong, whether they’re coming from Trump, the Republicans or my own party. They also want me to work with the president, and other elected officials on both sides of the aisle, to get things done. And that’s what I’m going to do.
Tom Suozzi represents the 3rd Congressional District.
