How many House seats did we lose? Makes no sense to me that we lost seats. WTF?

[triron]

We should have gained!

[wellst0nev0ter]

1. If Democrats can -- at best -- barely win during a pandemic

and an economic downturn, then we got a structural messaging problem.

[dustyscamp]

2. We better do better next time if we don't want a repeat of all this hell

[wellst0nev0ter]

4. Or we can blame the dirtbag left

and echo the goop echo chamber. That always works, right?

[wellst0nev0ter]

6. From the Politico article

Top Democrats had braced for the GOP police-focused ads. DCCC polled the issue over the summer as nationwide protests over social justice began dominating the headlines, finding it “incredibly damaging,” according to a Democratic strategist familiar with the data.

Shortly after, DCCC partnered with the Congressional Black Caucus’ political arm to attempt to produce a campaign message that addressed the systemic inequalities without handing the GOP a win on the policing debate. They created some ads, including ones focused on policing reform that aired in the Black community in seats held by vulnerable Democrats.

A handful of ads targeting black voters who were already going to vote for Dems anyway. And they ceded part of the argument to goops.

This was the extent of their counterattack of the goop smear campaign. Utterly pathetic.

https://www.politico.com/news/2020/11/13/house-democrats-post-election-reckoning-436335

[My Pet Orangutan]

23. We've got a fascism problem wellst0nev0ter

Democrats are always ready to look at weaknesses in messaging rather than the strength of our opponents.

Fight or flight - flee to the strongman, blame/fight the enemy within, is as powerful as any political messaging, anywhere, anytime. It's LCD, it works and its very effective in times of crisis.

Trump uncorked full-on fascism this time around.

[StarfishSaver]

14. Messaging isn't the problem

[wellst0nev0ter]

17. Yes it is

The goops are going to say whatever the hell they want, whether it's true or not. Dems need to know how to run smear campaigns, not political campaigns. At least we'd be backed up by the truth.

[Thekaspervote]

20. Agree..messaging was good and multi level

[cwydro]

47. James Clyburn disagrees with you.

And he knows what he’s talking about.

[StarfishSaver]

56. Actually, Jim Clyburn and I are in complete agreement

The Democrats had and have a strong message. Unfortunately, some people went off message and embraced a slogan that conflicted with/distracted from it.

That's not a messaging problem. The Democrats' message was fine. Clyburn's anger is over the fact that Democrats who didn't stick to it screwed up the races of those who did. He's right.

[Cha]

25. Yeah Yeah.. President Elect Joe Biden &

VP Elect Kamala Harris got 78 Million Votes & Counting Across the Nation. & an Electoral Landslide.

Got any Congratulations for those "Democrats".?

[Celerity]

31. Biden did well, but we may end up with a razor slim 221-214 House majority (thus 4 defections away

Last edited Sat Nov 14, 2020, 01:00 AM - Edit history (1)

from losing some major votes if the Rethugs hold together), plus a failure to take back the Senate (if we fail on one or both of the runoffs in GA) , plus we flipped zero statehouses, so the Rethugs will further ratfuck us via gerrymandering for the next decade when redistricting happens post 2020 Census.

And as impressive as Biden raw popular vote total was, we are atm, just 44,000 or so votes (out of 159 to 160 million votes cast) in 3 states (AZ, GA, WI) away from having Trump as POTUS for 4 more years.

[wellst0nev0ter]

46. I bet you said the exact same thing after Obama 2012

Despite the shellacking in House and Senate races. How did the next eight years turn out again? 🤔

[Cha]

50. Bet away.. you have no idea what

ever I've said.

[RDANGELO]

3. My hunch is that the violence connected to the protests and defunding the police hurt us.

Biden made the point strongly that people who perpetrated violence should be held accountable and that he was against defunding the police. We have to watch out for these phony issues of division.

[Stallion]

22. +1 Keep Your Eye on the Ball

[KentuckyWoman]

5. Defund the police.

I am probably wrong but I think that poor branding hurt both the incumbents who lost and the challengers who would have otherwise won.

[wellst0nev0ter]

9. Dems allowed themselves to be branded by goops, you mean

And when the goops cry "DEFUND" or "SOCIALIST" dems keep denying it like they are already cornered.

Dems don't know how to be an opposition party or smear the other side. That has to change.

[Me.]

10. Rep Clyburn

said it was defund the police and the threat of socialism

[cwydro]

48. This.

And he’s spot on.

[Eid Ma Clack Shaw]

49. If you have to explain a slogan, it's a bad one

if that slogan says something that, on the face of it, sounds radical and potentially scary, it’s an even worse one. I know ‘Defund...’ was never an official Democratic Party line, but it was tied to candidates by an element of the radical left which, despite generally having good intentions, has no clue about how to win national elections.

[obamanut2012]

54. DEfund the police 100%

I think we should defund them, and I hate the messaging and never say it.

[Me.]

61. THey Are A Problem

and we need to change how it's handled but how we do it and how we say it has to be handled carefully at this point. You'd think people would want that just for the amount of money that's paid out by cities and towns for their transgressions.

[Me.]

7. DEfund The Police & Socialism

For sure that's that a big part of why Max Rose lost. The ad played over and over and over.

[wellst0nev0ter]

12. What ads did Max Rose run?

If they were generic garbage, then no wonder he lost.

[Me.]

32. PLease See Post #30

Staten Island was a hard sell and he played to his base first time around saying he wouldn't vote for Nancy P. but he couldn't clear the hurdle the 2nd time. And when I say hundreds of ads pro/con aired I'm not exaggerating.

[wellst0nev0ter]

34. Yep

You lie down with goops, you wake up with fleas.

[triron]

13. So many voters are so damn gullible. Pukes win on fear. How ridiculous.

[Me.]

30. You Are So Right

though I think rep rose didn't help himself. He stated facts against the claim of 'deserting the blue' but then said he stood with trump on certain things which I think hurt him with the other side of the aisle.

[docgee]

8. Defund the police.

One if my co-workers admitted she almost voted for trump over that.

[wellst0nev0ter]

15. Propaganda works

What are dems going to do about it? Roll over when the goops lie again?

[msongs]

11. people voted Joe against trump and stayed with down tickets repubs nt

[In It to Win It]

16. Last I heard, we lost a net of 5 seats. Republicans flipped 8 and Dems flipped 3

[Celerity]

36. we're tracking to 221-214, unless we win one or both of the two ultra-tight races left (CA-25, IA-2)

IA-2 is so close, the Rethug leads by 47 votes the last time I checked.

Lucas County hand recount leaves margin unchanged in Iowa's 2nd Congressional District race

https://eu.desmoinesregister.com/story/news/politics/2020/11/13/lucas-county-iowa-hand-recount-election-results-confirms-mariannette-miller-meeks-leads-rita-hart/6253696002/

CHARITON, Ia. — A hand recount of ballots in one Lucas County precinct Friday left the margin unchanged in Iowa's too-close-to-call 2nd Congressional District race: just 47 votes.

Republican Mariannette Miller-Meeks still leads Democrat Rita Hart in the southeast Iowa race. While Miller-Meeks has claimed victory, Hart has said she will request recounts in all 24 counties in the district after errors found in two counties caused the lead to flip twice as results were tabulated.

In Lucas County, where one precinct mistakenly reported test data rather than election night results, officials conducted a countywide machine recount Thursday. That recount validated the election night count. Officials gathered again on Friday to confirm those results by hand for the Russell precinct where the error occurred.

Four volunteers — three wearing masks and one largely unmasked but wearing a rubber guard on her thumb to prevent potential paper cuts and stop ballots from slipping — flipped through ballots one by one, double checking the results for each race. They were overseen by Auditor Julie Masters and watched by members of both political parties, an employee for the Iowa Secretary of State's office and the media.

snip

[Six117]

18. Did gerrymandering play no part?

In addition to all the other ratfuckery?

[Celerity]

40. massive part, and we likely failed to flip any statehouses, so the post 2020 Census redistricting

will be yet another 10 year gerrymandered shiv in the batty. The Rethugs have gamed the system from top to bottom to an unreal degree. It is apartheid-like minority rule.

[Amishman]

58. Gerrymandering played a tiny part.

It looks like we out performed the pubs by about 2% in the house races overall. That would translate to a roughly 9 seat advantage. We are looking at half that.

So gerrymandering has them outperforming by about 5 seats. Probably more like 3 or 4 after our geographic disadvantage is taken into account.

We also benefit from it too in places like Maryland.

We seem to have a fairly evenly divided country. Makes sense that the house would be close too

[Celerity]

59. Look at Wisconsin at both federal and state level and tell me gerrymandering plays a minor role.

[herding cats]

43. Gerrymandering will be a result of this election, but it played zero part in it.

Gerrymandering is a distorting of districts which is done every 10 years after the census. We will lose seats due to this because they will be erased on local levels, but it didn't influence the election anymore than any other in the past decade.

[Thekaspervote]

19. 2018 was a stellar win for Dems in congress unlike any in 2 decades

a very high bar to repeat. Looks like we might end up losing 7 seats, that really isn’t too bad.

The pukes in FL funded “non candidates.” Placed to dilute various races. These candidates didn’t campaign, were unknown other than a good looking glossy photos and pulled votes from down ballot races.

Campaigning should include mention of down ballot races and how important they are to a produce results for a democratic platform. Voters just are not educated in how important that is!!

As soon as these GA senate races are over we must being working towards the midterm. Full steam ahead as if those races are just around the corner. We can not afford to lose the house!!

[StarfishSaver]

21. The House districts are so heavily gerrymandered, we need to pay more attention to state races

Until we take control of redistricting in the states, we're going to continue to face uphill battles building our numbers in the House.

[Celerity]

45. Not a net 7 lost, a net 15 lost IF we fail to win the 2 ultra close races left (CA-25 and IA-2 where

the Rethugs hold a 47 vote lead (IA-2) and a 104 vote lead (CA-25, the old Katie Hill seat, and where a centrist to centre-right PAC (With Honor PAC) linked to a bi-partisan Caucus (For Country) backed the Rethug, Garcia against the Dem, Christy Smith, and the DCCC, despite a blacklist policy on vendors who work against incumbent Dems (almost all those backlisted were vendors for left challengers, many who still won the primaries and then the general), refused to blacklist Trilogy Interactive, a main vendor for With Honor. The DCCC ended up spending almost 4 million USD with Trilogy, despite them not only working against a Dem (many vendors were banned for simply working for challengers in deep blue district primaries), but actually working for the Republican in a pinkish swing district for TWO elections (the Special to replace Hill and the Regular 2020 one just now). I have been following this all since summer 2019.

If we lose both IA-2 and CA-25, we very likely end up at a super narrow 221-214 majority, meaning just 4 defections and we do not have the votes if the Rethugs all hang together. Pelosi is going to have a potential shitstorm on her hands. We are crazy if we pick another speaker (which many of the centrist again want to do, just like 2018).

[calguy]

24. We flipped so many red seats in 2018 .....

it only stands to reason that some of them were going to flip back because they were, after all, red districts with gerrymandering and all. We now have two years, with a Democratic White House, to work on our message and hopefully not give the GOP talking points like defunding the police, among others, that they are all too skilled to use against us.

[Gothmog]

26. Socialsim and Defund the Police account for many if not all of these losses

[ecstatic]

27. The king of projection already told us why

Just swap out the party name and the company name.

[BainsBane]

28. I think people must have only voted the top of the ticket

and either left the rest blank or voted R down ballot.

[Indykatie]

29. Please Stop. Dems Flipped 41 Seats in 2018; Some in Red/Purple Districts

I think we should have expected to lose some of those races in a year with increased GOP turn-out.

[Celerity]

51. yes, exactly. I showed this before the whole burn the witch (witch being the left) games kicked off

completely.

Of the first 8 flips, all but one were Blue Wave aberrational wins in historically (some times for 40 years straight) Red districts. The other was the reddest district held by a Dem in the entire House. at least those were almost all a reversion to norm. I shall have to look at others once the dust settles. I do think a couple of the next ones can be blamed on RW attack adverts.

I will add that we had very poor responses though. Rethugs have been (1000% falsely) screaming COMMIE! SOCIALIST!!! since FDR days. It wasn't like it was a new tactic at all. We really need to learn to attack more. Put those fuckers on the defence hardcore.

I will finish by saying (as I am pretty balanced and work for and want a big tent party) that the furthest left handful (Bernie and the Squad) need to bloody stop FALSELY and FOOLISHLY self-labelling as 'democratic socialists' as they most definitely are not that at all. There are NO elected Dems at fedral level who are socialists. They (Bernie and the Squad) are simply bog standard social democratic reps. Nothing more, nothing less. They would be completely middle of the road centre left in most all other advanced western nations. They need to drop the hubris and stop trying to re-define 200 year old accepted definitions. Especially in partially uber reactionary America.

[Xolodno]

33. Nope.

Simple reasoning, we got a few red and purple seats. But most of the attention and money was in Presidential and Senate races. One of the reasons its easy for the opposite party to win seats during a mid term, they don't have to concentrate on the highest office and just continue fundraising.

[DetroitLegalBeagle]

35. The US House results isn't as bad as the results in the state houses

We will still maintain control the House. Per NYT, we flipped 3 seats and lost 10. There are 14 outstanding races, and we are currently leading in only 3 of them, but many are very close and will likely go to recounts.

But the bigger disappointment is the State houses. I don't think we flipped control of any of them and we lost control of both the New Hampshire house and senate. Regaining control of the state houses was important for the upcoming redistricting. Guaranteed the GOP controlled states will gerrymander the hell out of every state that they can.

[BlueInPhilly]

37. Been thinking about the same thing

It will be a short-lived majority if we don’t pull our act together. Republicans vote in our primaries to choose the weakest candidates. Case in point: McGrath and Hager. The senate is probably unattainable now if, during a real blue wave in 2018, we lost seats. The House is in real peril in 2022.

I for one think Pelosi should hand over the reign to someone else. She is the Hillary Clinton of the house - she is under a microscope and has been the right’s favorite boogey(wo)man for over a decade now. Schumer is ineffective and not really a leader. He too has to go.

Before acting like petulant children, AOC and her ilk should try to help unite a fractured party.

Get competent state Democratic leaders. And FFS, never hire Robbie Mook for any role in the party ever again.

Where are the Democratic heavy hitters? They should all be in GA right now. Where are the big donors? We absolutely need to win these 2 seats or we could expect another shellacking in 2 years.

[Drunken Irishman]

38. The Democrats lost mostly Republican-leaning districts.

Districts they won in 2018 when voters punished Republicans for Trump. This election, they had Trump to punish and did so.

[GulfCoast66]

39. The Socialist thing killed us. It did in Florida in 2018 as well.

The republicans saw it worked here and almost parlayed it into a win.

And it is a self own.

For the last 2 Democratic Primaries the second most popular candidate was a self described socialist.

You can spin it however you want. But words matter. Adjective Noun. When the noun in your self description is Socialist you are a self described socialist.

I can’t believe democrats are shocked the socialist label worked. A big percentage of the party supported a self described socialist. Why should Americans doubt that lots of democrats are socialist?

When in fact the number of actual socialist in the party could have a meeting in a medium size conference room.

If you don’t want your opponents to label you with something it is best not to claim that yourself. And too many of us did.

That the down and dirty.

[andym]

41. Trump brought out conservatives like no other Republican in a long time

He created a mini red-wave that neutralized the 2018 blue wave folks across the many districts Democrats won in 2018, some of which have a majority of Republicans.

An example, of Trump's mini red wave, is Rep. Donna Shalala losing her seat in Miami because so many conservative Cuban-Americans came out and voted there for Trump and against her. Hillary beat Trump there 59% to 39%, but Joe Biden only beat Trump there 51% to 48.2%. Meanwhile, Shalala was beaten 48.4% to 51.4% for the Republican Salazar, who Shalala had beaten in a close election in 2018. The election had been close in 2018, because Salazar is popular in the Latino community, the extra support from Trump supporters this time pushed her over the top.

[bdtrppr6]

42. you'd think so

but Perez sucks and there was little to no ground game outside of AOC et al actually helping other jurisdictions. Dems are not good at this. At all! This whole "socialism cost us" nonsense is total bullshit. It's the only reason Dems won as many as they did.

Get your head out of your ass. Wake up and move forward!

[intrepidity]

44. Voter suppression

As we know, Trump projects. He expected to win, because of the numerous and varied mechanisms his cronies put in place to strongly suppress Dem votes.

He's in disbelief now, because his side underestimated just how much they needed to do.

But they did enough that we didn't have the massive blue tsunami that otherwise would have been evident. And some of our House seats were casualties. Etc.

[Wanderlust988]

52. Defund the police, Abolish ICE, Decriminalizing border crossings

Trump yelling about it everyday and we had no suitable retort.

[tavernier]

53. And what is it about people disliking Pelosi?

All my friends are democrats and none of them like Pelosi, almost with a vengeance. I think she is fantastic, meeting her was the highlight of my year (a few back). But I’ve seen and heard all the negativity and none can explain why, other than some nonsense like “irritating” etc. I honestly wondered if loss of house seats was somehow connected. And as for the republican never trumpers... she is a close second in their book.

[StarfishSaver]

57. People hate Pelosi because she's effective and she's a woman

Even Democrats are susceptible to that.

But I don't think that's the reason for the result. People are ignoring the main reason - gerrymandering. 2018 was lightning in a bottle but it's not unusual for the party opposing an unpopular president to pick up seats in a mid-term. But in a general election with the kind of turnout we saw, no one should really be surprised that Dems didn't repeat that given how gerrymandered the districts are. It's amazing that we managed to keep the House considering how the lines are drawn.

And those lines are drawn that way because too many Democrats had a temper tantrum in 2010 and allowed state legislatures across the country to turn red.

[uponit7771]

55. A Slogan does ***NOT*** excuse such BULL SHIT POLLING !! The US has WORST polling of ANY developed

... country on the planet, yes, the people who put a man on the moon before I was born can't poll its citizens worth shit.

There's either horrible polling or some down ballot shit that's non democratic.

Either way, the polling for the Jan 5th election? BUNK ALREADY !!

There's no reason to believe not a letter of it.

[triron]

60. hmmm.