Nancy Pelosi watched in horror as Democrats lost seat after seat on election night.
Democrats are now left with a bare majority in the House of Representatives.
And now, this once in a decade event could spell the end of Nancy Pelosi’s political career.
When the 2020 election cycle began, political pundits across the nation promised that Democrats would make sweeping gains in the House of Representatives.
Not only were Democrats guaranteed to keep control of the House, but they were also destined to expand that majority with new pickups in states across America, most notably Texas, where Democrats were targeting nearly 10 Republican held states as potential flips.
The political class was writing, as late as just a few days before Election Day, that Pelosi’s House majority would number nearly 245 Democrats when the dust cleared.
But elections aren’t held in just simulations and in models.
When the final results came through on Election Night, it was clear that Democrats fell far short of the lofty goal the party had set for itself in the House.
Not only that, but in the days and weeks after the election, more and more Democrats began to lose their seats, as late-counted votes finally came in and flipped multiple seats for Republicans.
As it currently stands, Democrats are now favored to lose nearly 10 seats in the House of Representatives, as opposed to the 10-15 seats they were projected to flip earlier this year.
That has left Pelosi in a terrible position, as her House majority is now barely large enough to make herself Speaker for another term, let alone pass any substantial left-wing legislation.
But worse yet, Democrats’ crushing defeats in local and state races across the country earlier this month has left the party in a critically weakened position heading into the 2020 redistricting cycle.
Redrawing congressional maps usually only happens once every 10 years, and it gives both parties an opportunity to draw maps that will elect more of their members to Congress, and to state legislatures across the Country.
But Democrats’ historically poor performance this month meant that the party is left with control of very few states to redraw Congressional maps next year.
RealClearPolitics reports, “Following last week’s elections, Democrats will retain control the House of Representatives. At the same time, their margin will be considerably smaller than it was in the preceding Congress. Republicans will likely hold between 208 and 212 House seats, placing them within shouting distance of the majority in the next election.
Of course, litigation may change the calculus, but absent court losses in Pennsylvania, North Carolina, Virginia and Florida, Republicans would likely control the House in the 118th Congress elected in 2022.”
Coupled with the fact that the party in power usually tends to lose seats in midterm elections, as well as the fact that Democrat-run states are losing Congressional seats when the census redistricting takes place, and the odds of Pelosi staying Speaker for long plummets.
