Swing-District Democrat Says Midterm Voters Made Clear They Want Party to ‘Take on the Villains Screwing Them Over’

Democratic Rep. Pat Ryan, who represents New York's 18th congressional district, said on Friday that his party's victory in this week's elections has given it a mandate to take on billionaires and corporate interests.

In a multi-post thread posted to social media, Ryan sought to challenge predictable political narratives taking shape in the corporate media about the reasons for Democrats’ historic wins.

"While pundits do the same-old tired debate of whether Tuesday’s election results mean Democrats should be more progressive or more moderate, they’re missing the whole damn point," Ryan began. "This was an election about POWER."

"Over the past two years, Trump has made it abundantly clear who’s in power," Ryan continued. "And big surprise, it's not the American people—who are getting screwed over by a political and economic system rigged in favor of the top 1%."

Ryan then listed off a number of bad actors who have been rigging the system even further to their benefit under Trump's watching, including "AI oligarchs getting tax breaks to build a technology that could kill us all," "UnitedHealth denying your insurance claims (from the provider they own!), while you go bankrupt," and "[SpaceX CEO] Elon Musk spending $750 million to buy our elections, while making billions in government contracts."

"Voters see how Trump and Republicans are using their power, and they said HELL NO," Ryan said. "They want to feel in control of their own lives again. They want elected leaders who will listen to THEM, fight for them, and deliver for them. Not for the ultra-rich and the Epstein class."

Now that voters in 2026 have firmly rejected the GOP, Ryan said, it is now up to Democrats to deliver a fairer economic system that doesn't simply funnel money to the ultrarich.

"Democrats who won across the country understood that voters don’t just want lower costs," Ryan emphasized. "They want us to fundamentally fix this broken system. They want us to call out and take on the villains screwing them over, whether corrupt politicians or greedy CEOs, and put power back in their hands. Be a leader who works for the PEOPLE—not the billionaires and corporations funding our politics."

Ryan's post echoes a report published on Thursday by Data for Progress, which found that populist economic appeals were central to Democrats' Tuesday electoral success.

The report also found robust support among voters for a number of specific populist policies, including higher taxes on millionaires, raising the minimum wage to $15 an hour, and a temporary moratorium on building artificial intelligence data centers.