House Results Deliver Stunning Blow to Nancy Pelosi's Dreams of Big Dem Gains
No matter who wins in the drawn-out epilogue to Tuesday’s presidential election, one big loser is already clear:
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, along with her slavish mainstream media fanbase that confidently predicted Pelosi’s Democrats were going to grow their majority in the lower chamber.
Far from watching her party conference expand in the 2020 election, as results came in Tuesday and into Wednesday morning, it was clear Pelosi was lucky to keep her speakership at all.
HOUSE UPDATE 8 AM
GOP is +4 (6 wins, 2 losses)
12 Democrats are currently trailing.
2 Republicans are currently trailing.Democrats favored to keep control – BARELY. This is a giant stumble for Speaker Pelosi & the DCCC.
— Jamie Dupree (@jamiedupree) November 4, 2020
“Democrats favored to keep control – BARELY. This is a giant stumble for Speaker Pelosi & the DCCC,” Jamie Dupree, Cox Media Group’s Capitol reporter, tweeted Wednesday morning.
The “DCCC” Dupree referred to is the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, the organization charged with getting more leftists elected to the House.
Prior to Tuesday’s vote, DCCC Chairwoman Rep. Cheri Bustos of Illinois was exuberant in her expectations.
“I’m confident in saying this: We’re going to hold on to the majority; we’re going to grow our majority,” Bustos told The Washington Post last week in an article headlined “Democrats target districts in Trump territory as party grows optimistic about expanding House majority.”
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“We’re well positioned to have a good night,” Bustos said.
On Tuesday night, Pelosi herself fed the storyline.
“Tonight, House Democrats are poised to further strengthen our majority — the biggest, most diverse, most dynamic, women-led House majority in history,” she said, according to The Post in a Wednesday report that bore a headline reflecting the embarrassing reality:
“House Democrats appear poised to keep the House but fall drastically behind expectations.”
“Drastically behind expectations” is putting it mildly.
Radically, unaccountably, disastrously wrong, might describe it a little better.
“Instead, several Democratic incumbents the party believed were secure found themselves suddenly out of a job,” The Post reported. “And many GOP districts that Democratic leaders had been eyeing for months landed solidly in Republican control.”
Politico’s Jack Sherman summed up the state of affairs in a Twitter thread that started with:
“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.”
One of those allegedly secure Democratic incumbents was Bustos herself, whose election was still undecided Wednesday morning, though Bustos was ahead by about 10,000 votes in the 17th Congressional District, according to Yahoo.
AND, TO ADD INSULT TO INJURY, the chair of the DCCC, Rep. CHERI BUSTOS, is struggling to hang on in her Illinois district. Speaker NANCY PELOSI and her leadership team will have a lot to think about — and explain — in the next few weeks. Rs could have a net gain of 10 seats
— Jake Sherman (@JakeSherman) November 4, 2020
“Speaker NANCY PELOSI and her leadership team will have a lot to think about — and explain — in the next few weeks,” Sherman wrote. “Rs could have a net gain of 10 seats.”
Pelosi, regrettably, won her own re-election easily. However, one thing Pelosi will have to explain is how her party failed to win a majority of state delegations in the House.
In the unlikely event of a tie in the Electoral College — one mathematical combination of electoral votes would have Arizona, which was called by Fox News for Biden on Tuesday, actually ending up in President Donald Trump’s column — the election could be decided in the House of Representatives. (The Trump campaign has called for Fox News to recant its election night call because the state results aren’t official, according to the New York Post.)
In the House, Democrats hold a majority of members, but Republicans control a majority of state delegations. In a presidential vote in the House, one ballot is cast per state, so Republicans would presumably vote another four years for Trump.
That would make Pelosi an even bigger loser, of course — one of the biggest in American political history, given her venomous behavior toward the president since she became House speaker.
But it doesn’t have to go that far to make the point.
Americans who’ve watched a House Democratic majority on the warpath against a duly elected American president for the past two years — including an impeachment effort every sane American knew was a sham — were actually expected by pundits, pollsters and Speaker Pelosi herself to expand that majority on Tuesday.
In reality, an almost complete reversal occurred. And for Pelosi and her Democrats, no matter how the presidential race comes out, they’re losers any way you cut it.
This article appeared originally on The Western Journal.
