'Voters viscerally resent condescension and will punish you for it at the ballot box,' Torres noted
New York Democrat doubles down on criticism far-left hurt Democratic Party this election
New York Democratic Rep. Ritchie Torres told CNN's Jim Acosta that the far-left "defund the police" movement cost the Democratic Party minority voters this election.
As the political left reflects on the 2024 election results, Rep. Ritchie Torres, D-N.Y., warned that "vilifying voters of color as white supremacists" will only push them further toward President-elect Trump.
"Popular explanations for the outcome of the election seem to include white supremacy, patriarchy, misogyny…" Torres noted in a post on X.
"I am going to state the obvious here: vilifying voters of color as white supremacists will not attract them back to the Democratic Party. It will drive them further into Trump’s camp. The purpose of politics is not to repel but to attract. Condescension is the most powerful repellant in politics. Voters viscerally resent condescension and will punish you for it at the ballot box," he added.
NEW YORK DEMOCRAT RIPS ‘FAR LEFT’ FOR TRUMP VICTORY: 'IVORY-TOWERED NONSENSE'
Democratic Rep. Ritchie Torres of New York has said that demonizing "voters of color as white supremacists" will push them further toward President-elect Trump. (Noam Galai/Getty Images)
Trump soundly defeated Vice President Kamala Harris on Tuesday to win the 2024 White House contest.
Torres has suggested that signs of the impending drubbing were clear.
"The signs of a decisive defeat were staring us in the face all along. We were simply in denial about them or willfully blind to them, substituting magical thinking for actual analysis," he declared in a tweet.
BERNIE SANDERS EXCORIATES DEMOCRATIC PARTY, CALLS CAMPAIGN ‘DISASTROUS’ AFTER TRUMP VICTORY
"Voters viscerally resent condescension and will punish you for it at the ballot box," Rep. Ritchie Torres said, referring to Vice President Kamala Harris' loss in the presidential election. (Michael Nagle/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
"In recent history, there’s no precedent for an incumbent party winning a presidential election when the percentage of Americans who think the country is on the right track or headed in the right direction is in the 20s. The structural challenge was simply insurmountable," he added.
Torres, who has served in the House of Representatives since 2021 and won another term in office during the 2024 election, has accused the "far left" of alienating people from the Democratic Party.
"Donald Trump has no greater friend than the far left, which has managed to alienate historic numbers of Latinos, Blacks, Asians, and Jews from the Democratic Party with absurdities like ‘Defund the Police’ or ‘From the River to the Sea’ or ‘Latinx,’" the congressman opined in a post on X.
Rep. Ritchie Torres, D-N.Y., said the far left panders to Twitter, Twitch and TikTok and is not representative of the real world. (Noam Galai/Getty Images)
"There is more to lose than there is to gain politically from pandering to a far left that is more representative of Twitter, Twitch, and TikTok than it is of the real world. The working class is not buying the ivory-towered nonsense that the far left is selling," he added.
The lawmaker has also suggested that his side of the political aisle should not push the idea that they suffer from a "messaging problem."
"We should expunge from our vocabulary the words: we have a 'messaging problem,'" Torres wrote on X. "When over 70% of Americans think we are on the wrong track or headed in the wrong direction, that is not a messaging problem. That is reality problem.
"Inflation and immigration are not 'messaging problems.' These are realities that produced discontent widespread enough to hand Donald Trump the presidency. We ignore the real-world messages that these realities send at our own peril," he warned.
Alex Nitzberg is a writer for Fox News Digital.
