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Democrats Test-Drive Being the Aggressors on Border Security

Tom Suozzi’s win this week gives Democrats a different look for November.

Former U.S. Rep. Tom Suozzi, Democratic candidate for New York's 3rd congressional district
The DSCC is experimenting with new messaging, buoyed by Tom Suozzi’s win. Stefan Jeremiah/AP

The legislative border drama of the past couple weeks effectively culminated with the undeniably solid special election victory of former Rep. now-Rep.-elect Tom Suozzi, a Democrat in a suburb who faced an opposition campaign seemingly designed in a lab to show that Democrats have a problem in the suburbs because of immigration politics.

In the hours since, Democrats began actively testing a plan where it is in fact Republicans who have the problem. It’s as if a trailer for an alternate-reality sci-fi movie has dropped with the narrator intoning: “Imagine a world where Democrats talk about the border and Republicans wish they didn’t.”

The Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee is actually spending money on seeing if this vision of politics can become a reality. On Tuesday, the group popped a digital ad on Meta-owned platforms targeting Republicans who helped kill the bipartisan Senate border bill crafted by their colleague Sen. James Lankford of Oklahoma.