House Democrats didn't have much to celebrate Tuesday night. They expected a blue wave across the country. But as the votes came in, those hopes didn't materialize. They crashed and burned.
"House Democrats fall way short in disappointing night," a headline from The Hill read on Wednesday morning.
Under Speaker Nancy Pelosi's leadership, House Democrats hoped to pick up five to 15 Republican seats on Tuesday night. Destiny wouldn't have it.
A brief summary of the evening's events:
"While Democrats will retain their majority, a handful of their front-line members — incumbents facing the toughest races — had been defeated. And after boasting about how they’d expanded the map and were playing “deep into Trump country,” they’d failed to pick off even a single House Republican running for reelection. Democrats did manage to pick up a pair of GOP-held open seats in North Carolina, where redistricting had made the districts much bluer, and a third in Georgia after the retirement of vulnerable GOP Rep. Rob Woodall."
It was, The Hill concluded, a "devastating night" for the party. And MSNBC's Rachel Maddow grieved along with them.
"This has not been a night where incumbent Senators have been turfed out and incumbent members of the House. Still, the most likely way to lose the House seat is in primary rather than the general election in our gerrymandering United States of America,” Maddow said as the results trickled in. “It’s been remarkable to see the stability not only between the 2016 and 2020 presidential map, but also in Congressional races and Senate races up and down. On either side, you’re not seeing — not only is there no wave, it’s like a pond where you drop in a rock and there’s no ripples.”
That's when Joy Reid chimed in to say Republicans were "rewarded for their slavish devotion to Donald Trump."
And other networks and news outlets slowly began to reach the same conclusion.
CNN just said the chance of a big blue wave is gone
— Cassandra Fairbanks (@CassandraRules) November 4, 2020
Playbook: What blue wave?
— Jake Sherman (@JakeSherman) November 4, 2020
TUESDAY WAS AN ABJECT DISASTER for Democrats in Washington. To imagine the amount of soul searching and explaining the party will have to do after Tuesday is absolutely dizzying. The infighting will be bloody -- as it should be.
The other big picture story here is how untrustworthy the polls have become. Fox News's Tucker Carlson said that the polling industry has become so skewed, he's ready to name names of people who should be fired.
Meanwhile, we wait for a winner in the presidential election as a handful of battlegrounds have yet to provide their final tallies. Be sure to follow our coverage on our results live blog.