Commentary: Democrats must deliver on their affordability promises

Democrats are understandably giddy about an Election Day that saw them winning in places the GOP hasn’t lost in generations.

Allow me to be a wet blanket.

Just two years ago, Donald Trump rode a wave of voter anger over high prices to recapture the White House by promising to lower costs on day one.

On Tuesday, some of the very voters who gave him a second chance at the presidency delivered a stinging rebuke because many of them remain angry about high prices.

The big message for Democrats from Tuesday’s results is that they’d better not waste a single day, because if they don’t deliver, the pendulum may swing back in the GOP’s direction two years from now.

Some of the victorious Dems say they got the message.

“You have to deliver. And what you tell people you’re going to do, you have to do,” Rep. Rob Menendez told me in Newark Wednesday morning.

Menendez had no GOP challenger to worry about this year, because Hudson County’s Republican Party appears to have given up trying to win there. But he worked his tail off for his colleagues, including Rep.-elect Rebecca Bennett, who ousted GOP Rep. Tom Kean Jr. in one of New Jersey Democrats’ biggest Election Day wins.

Menendez was in Newark Wednesday to join activists crowing about the election results. He danced a jig of glee at the mention of Democrat Zack Mullock’s stunning win in the heavily Republican 2nd District.

Also on hand was Democratic Rep. Analilia Mejia, who won reelection in a romp Tuesday. Mejia said voters have watched their elected leaders “nibbling around the edges” of the cost-of-living crisis instead of acting boldly to address affordability. That’s why they swung from Trump to Democrats in just 24 months, she said.

“It’s not that they’re fickle, it’s that they didn’t see a result. They have eyes and they have ears,” she said.

What those eyes and ears saw over the last two years was a president enacting tariffs that made costs higher and starting a war in Iran that led to skyrocketing gas prices, not to mention focusing heavily on building a grand ballroom for himself and putting his picture on every piece of public property he could find, including money.

At Trump’s first post-election press conference — one other presidents have used to express humility about their party’s losses and pledge that they’ve heard the message voters sent — the president touted his various vanity projects. The voters said, we need lower costs! Trump responded, look at my pretty ballroom!

Menendez told me he believes there’s a chance Trump will work with the new Congress on issues like elder care and child care.

“I think he wants to salvage whatever he can, and if that means making deals with Democrats, he will,” Menendez said.

I have my doubts. For Democrats’ sake, they’d better find a way to deliver on their affordability promises regardless. Considering the actions of our seesawing electorate in the last two cycles, voters are tired of waiting for change. They’re demanding it now.

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