Tipsheet

House Democratic Losses Have Members Asking...What Happened?

Matt Vespa
Matt Vespa  |  November 09, 2020 6:00 AM

[Subject to change]

Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi is doing her job trying to say that Democrats have a mandate this year. They don’t. She’s going to be working with a very slim Democratic majority and there is still an off chance that Republicans, believe it or not, could retake the House. This is subject to change, of course, but this is not a blue wave year. Even MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow admitted this. Republicans were supposed to lose seats this cycle, but they didn’t. They gained seats. Alarm bells are already ringing, with more level-headed members, like Rep. Abigail Spanberger (D-VA), saying that the Democratic Party’s flirtation with socialism and defunding the police almost cost her re-election (via ABC News):

House Democrats grappled with the results of the still-unfolding election on a conference call Thursday, struggling with how to understand their unexpected losses even as former Vice President Joe Biden appears to be on the path to the White House.

While House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and her lieutenants predicted Democrats would expand their majority ahead of Election Day, Republicans are on track for a net gain of seats.

"Something went wrong here across the entire political world," said Rep. Cheri Bustos, D-Ill., the chair of the House Democrats' Campaign Committee who nearly lost her race in a President Donald Trump-supporting district.

[…]

Rep. Abigail Spanberger, D-Va., a former CIA officer who narrowly defeated her opponent in a moderate suburban district around Richmond, was blunt with her colleagues about the results.

"From a congressional standpoint, it was a failure. It was not a success," she said. "We lost members we shouldn't have lost."

[…]

"If we are classifying Tuesday as a success and we run this way again, we will get f------ torn apart in 2022," she said flatly.

This is a debate that is not going away among Democrats, which could lead to some serious bloodsports, as progressives don’t want to compromise and everyone knows what’s up, for lack of a better term, regarding how well the far Left actually does in places that aren’t New York City, Boston, Detroit, or all of California.

Rep. Elissa Slotkin (D-MI) is another moderate Democrat who won re-election, despite being caught in a lie about staying in DC until a COVID relief bill was passed. After making that declaration, she was found fleeing for home about an hour later.

At any rate, this was another slice of the 2020 cycle where the so-called polling experts were wrong. As Reagan noted, conservative women dominated and Ms. Bustos almost got clipped. That's not the sign of healthy ground for Democrats at the congressional level by any stretch.

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