Amid tears, Democrats promise ‘deep dive’ on losses
House majority weakens, despite party polls that predicted huge gains
WASHINGTON—Democrats wept, cursed and traded blame Thursday during an extraordinary party confab to dissect the disappointing results of this week’s elections, agreeing on little except that they needed a “deep dive” into how they had ended up with painful losses that weakened their House majority instead of the big gains they had boldly predicted.
In a caucus meeting held by telephone that was their first group conversation since election day, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Rep. Cheri Bustos of Illinois, who led the party’s campaign arm, defended their efforts. Democrats expressed frustration over the loss of eight of their members — and a net loss of six seats, with 36 races still undecided — that had left them with a slimmer margin of control.
“We did not win every battle, but we did win the war,” Pelosi said.
Party leaders noted that Democrats appeared on track to hold the House, thanks to hardfought victories by incumbents in competitive districts, and that former vice-president Joe Biden appeared headed toward a victory, according to seven people on the call who requested anonymity to divulge a conversation that was intended to be private.
But during the call, which lasted three hours and previewed divisions among Democrats over how to wield their power and define their message, Bustos conceded that things had gone badly awry. She said she was “gutted” and “heartbroken” by the losses. “Something went wrong,” Bustos said, blaming incorrect modelling of the electorate in polling and promising a “deep dive” on the matter. “They all pointed to one political environment, but voters who turned out looked a lot like 2016.
“We protected the lone firewall in our democracy,” she added. “Now hopefully and probably with Joe Biden to take back the White House, we are now in a position to put our priorities into action because we held on to this fragile majority.”
It was a bitter pill for Democrats who had been ebullient only days before about their chances. On election day, Pelosi and Bustos had crowed about their likelihood of success. Pelosi cited predictions that the party could pick up five, 10 or even 20 seats and said she was worried about “fewer than a handful of incumbents.” Both women, though, declined to offer their own precise predictions.
But by Thursday, one of the incumbents they had not been worried about, Rep. Debbie Mucarsel-Powell, who was defeated Tuesday night as President Donald Trump won a resounding victory in her Miamiarea district, broke into tears as she spoke out to her soon-to-be former colleagues about internal divides in the party.
“We have a divided America,” Mucarsel-Powell said during the call. “Continue to fight for kids or what you believe in, but if you have a problem, pick up the phone — don’t tweet it out.”
Rep. Abigail Spanberger, who narrowly escaped defeat Wednesday in a conservativeleaning district in Virginia that Democrats had also believed secure, chastised her progressive colleagues for embracing the “defund the police” movement and for not pushing back forcefully against accusations of socialism. If Democrats did not acknowledge the election results as a “failure” and change strategies, she said using an expletive for emphasis, they would get “crushed” in future elections. To that, Pelosi objected. “I disagree, Abigail, that it was a failure,” she said. “We won the House.”