Dem Rep. Ritchie Torres tells James Carville where the party failed in 2024

Rep. Ritchie Torres, D-N.Y., told veteran Democratic strategist James Carville that Democrats need to distance themselves from the far-left in order to regain popularity among everyday Americans. 

The representative from the South Bronx told Carville and “Politics War Room” podcast co-host Al Hunt on Thursday that Democrats need to go back to the basics and focus on the issues that impact working-class Americans, and ditch the “fashionable nonsense.” He also zeroed in on one particular issue, saying of the party’s failure: “Where we… bear more responsibility is on immigration.” 

“We [Democrats] should strive for simple, repeatable messages, nothing fancy, like lower-costs, safe streets, secure borders, protect Social Security, Medicaid and Medicare, make government work for working people. That should be our platform. Ignore the fashionable nonsense.”

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Hunt acknowledged that while he and Carville both believe that most Democrats would agree with what Torres said, that is not the current perception of the Democratic Party. He asked Torres if Democrats being too focused on “fringe issues” had led to this perception of the party.

While Torres wrote off cultural issues as being of “tertiary importance” in the 2024 election, he did concede that Republicans had beat the Democratic Party to the punch when it came to economic and immigration issues.

“I feel like cultural issues were of tertiary importance in the election. I felt the main reasons we lost were inflation and immigration. I know supply chain disruptions led to the highest inflation in more than four decades and when you’re the party in power presiding over historic inflation, you’re going to pay a political price. So, when it comes to inflation, we as Democrats were victims of circumstance,” Torres claimed.

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Although he felt Democrats were “victims of circumstance” on economic issues, he did acknowledge the shortcomings of the party when it came to immigration.

“Where we [Democrats] do, I think, bear more responsibility, is on immigration. You know, since 2022, there was an overwhelming flow of migration at the border whose impact was felt in cities like New York, where the shelter system and the social safety net and our finances were completely overwhelmed. There was a poll in December 2023 showing that 85% of New Yorkers, in a blue city, were concerned about the impact of the migrant crisis on New York City. And the Biden Administration waited two and a half years before taking action against the migrant crisis and by then it was too late. The damage was done. Republicans had successfully weaponized the issue against us,” Torres stated.

Torres then accused former President Joe Biden of “pandering to the far-left” after waiting over two years to address the crisis at the southern border, even though reducing illegal immigration was popular among nearly all demographic groups in the country.

“There was a poll on the president’s [Joe Biden’s] executive order restricting migration. The poll revealed that the majority of Americans, Black and White, Latino and Asians, were overwhelmingly in favor of his executive order. So if his executive order was effective at reducing migration, if it was broadly popular among the American people, why did he wait so long before acting? And the answer is simple: he was pandering to the far-left,” Torres asserted.

The congressman believes that the far-left “has outsized power over the messaging and policymaking of the Democratic Party,” which he believes makes Democrats “far less viable in the general elections.”