Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has taken to making some pretty bizarre claims over the last couple of weeks.
“Did you know that House Democrats got nearly 2 million more votes than Donald Trump?” she asked reporters last week while displaying a pre-printed placard showing popular vote totals for House Democrats, President Donald Trump and House Republicans. “Everybody turned out and it was a great victory — a mandate.”
Just a few days after Election Day, she told frustrated House Democrats on a conference call to “hold your head up high. We helped Joe Biden get that mandate.”
The big problem with Speaker Pelosi’s claims that Democrats were somehow given “mandates” by the American people is that it’s just not true.
Perhaps her decades of being entrenched in the swampy politics of Washington, D.C., have caused Pelosi to forget that election “mandates” in the House aren’t measured by looking at the popular vote totals of Republican and Democrat members. It is gauged by the individual wins and losses of each member, and that is there where the true story resides.
Contra to media/pollster/Democrat pre-election predictions, there was no massive “blue wave” in the House. There wasn’t one in the Senate for that matter, either. As of this writing, just three House race results are outstanding, but we don’t even need to know what the outcome of those races are to know that House Democrats took a shellacking in this year’s elections.
Per Cook Political Report’s Dave Wasserman, the net gain for Republicans in the House stands at nine seats. As far as the remaining three races (CA-25, IA-02, and NY-22) are concerned, Wasserman tweeted that he’d “be mildly surprised if Dems win” any of them.
As of Friday, here’s what the House count looks like: 222 Democrats; 210 Republicans. Should Republicans take the last three, that would put the count at 222 Democrats to 213 Republicans in the upcoming 117th United States Congress.
That would be pretty astonishing, considering the breakdown was 232D, 197R, 1L and five vacancies going into Election Day 2020.
The big problem with Speaker Pelosi’s claims that Democrats were somehow given ‘mandates’ by the American people is that it’s just not true.
On top of how badly House Democrats did in their races is the fact that Democrats didn’t fare any better in state legislative races. The 538.com polling blog reported last week that “Republicans won almost every election where redistricting was at stake.”
“The GOP’s victories in state-level elections could pay dividends long after Biden leaves office, thanks to their influence over next year’s redistricting process,” they noted.
Between the drubbing House Democrats took and Republican victories/holds in state legislative races across the country, that does not equate to a Democratic mandate in any way, shape, form or fashion — no matter what the final popular vote counts end up being in the presidential race and House races.
Though Republicans are understandably upset about the presidential election, they will have much to be thankful for when they sit down at the Thanksgiving table on Thursday.
Thanks to President Trump, the Supreme Court now has a conservative majority. In addition to that, House Speaker Pelosi will have a harder time getting her radical legislative priorities rammed through in 2021. Also, the redistricting battles in numerous states across our great country are going to give state Democratic lawmakers, governors and their high-priced teams of super-lawyers many, many nightmares for years to come.
On the U.S. Senate side, we have two more races to go — in Georgia on Jan. 5 — to find out if Republicans will maintain their control in 2021.
Stay tuned!
Stacey Matthews has also written under the pseudonym Sister Toldjah and is a regular contributor to RedState and Legal Insurrection.
