In a guest opinion published by The New York Times on Thursday, Antonio Delgado, New York’s lieutenant governor, panned the “neoliberal order” and offered a path forward for Democrats reeling after Donald Trump’s election victory earlier this month.

The president-elect lost New York state by just 11.8 percentage points this year, a marked improvement over his 2016 and 2020 performances when he lost by 23.2 points and 22.5 points.

The lieutenant governor’s op-ed began with a recollection of Barry Goldwater’s failed presidential campaign in 1964, which he wrote laid the groundwork for Ronald Reagan’s landslide electoral victories in 1980 and 1984. The Democratic Party, Delgado wrote, could similarly use this year’s defeat to establish a new order, but “the era of tinkering around the edges is over.”

Delgado recalled the emergence of Bill Clinton’s “Third Way” philosophy, which adopted some of Reagan’s conservative agenda to win the White House. The limitations of this approach, he wrote, were made clear during the 2008 financial crisis, when leading Democrats helped bail out the leading Wall Street financial institutions.

“Tragically, our party has failed to rescue itself ever since,” Delgado wrote. “Mr. Trump’s success in 2016 and this month underscored the flaw inherent in the Democratic approach of promising to move forward while looking backward.”

Neoliberalism is broadly understood as a political and economic ideology that emphasizes market solutions, free trade and limited government spending and regulation.

Despite losses on the national level — for the presidency, the House of Representatives and the Senate — Democrats saw local victories. Josh Riley defeated Rep. Marc Molinaro in a nail-bitingly close election, and State Sen. Lea Webb ‘04 and Assemblywoman Donna Lupardo MA ‘84 beat back their Republican challengers.

Delgado said President Joe Biden, despite attempts to confront “decades of failed economic policy,” including taking on modern monopolies, was the wrong messenger for change.

“Clamoring to be the savior of democracy, the Democratic Party engendered disdain from the very people it sought to serve — everyday, hard-working Americans fed up with being lied to and squeezed out of opportunity,” Delgado wrote.

Trump won, he continued, because he campaigned “like a populist, even though he governs like an oligarch and couldn’t care less about the fact that the top 1 percent has more wealth than the bottom 90 percent.”

Democrats have seen shrinking statewide margins for years. In an approximate 10-point improvement over Molinaro, who ran for governor in 2018, Lee Zeldin, a former Republican congressman recently tapped to lead the Environmental Protection Agency, earned 46.8 percent of the vote against Gov. Kathy Hochul. Hochul’s office did not return a request for comment about the op-ed’s sentiment.

A notable exception is U.S. Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, who defeated her Republican opponent by 17.5 points to win reelection this November. Democrats flipped three congressional districts in New York, including Riley’s win against Molinaro.

Writing that “common sense should rule the day,” Delgado called on the party to secure the Southern Border and “protect American workers from bad trade deals” in the globalized economy.

The opinion piece ended with a call to action for Democrats, who Delgado said could win again if they could successfully argue that economic inequality and money in politics are the true threats to democracy. “Not all solutions should be based on the market; the market tends to reward greed, and cultivating greed should never be the mission of a democratic government,” he wrote.

Delgado was appointed in May 2022 following the resignation of Brian Benjamin, the former lieutenant governor indicted earlier that year. He was the first person of color to represent upstate New York in the U.S. Congress, unseating an incumbent after running a campaign he said was rooted in affordability.

Just before Election Day, Delgado, along with House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries ‘92, Riley, Webb and Lupardo, headlined a get-out-the-vote rally in Binghamton. At the time, he extolled public servants who sacrifice their needs for the collective good.

“If Democrats lead with a bold, cleareyed vision for the future, voters will support them,” Delgado wrote. “I have seen it firsthand.”