The Speaker of the House of Representatives, Nancy Pelosi, once predicted that she would have a majority of the House won in November 2019.
Now, days before the November 3 elections, it appears to have done so.
With control of the House barely contested, Pelosi is expanding her reach to strengthen Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden and win additional House seats in the event that Congress must resolve any Electoral College dispute with President Donald Trump.
Pelosi said she feels so confident that Democrats will keep the House this election that she is already preparing to win the next one in 2022.
“This year, I’m trying to win it two years early, being so substantial in this election that as soon as we start next year, people will see our strength,” Pelosi told The Associated Press in an interview.
“We intend to keep the House and grow our numbers,” he said of the November 3 elections, and “help win the Senate and the presidency.”
It’s a surprising change for the speaker, who just two years ago was being challenged for her job as the leader of the House Democrats. Pelosi rose as the face of the party, the House impeached the president, and emboldened Democrats are on the march to pick up House seats deep in Trump’s country.
Democrats are working to re-elect about 40 members of the House of Representatives elected in the 2018 midterm to win the majority, most of them from districts Trump won in 2016. They are seeking more seats in Republican strongholds historically outside of the reach, such as Nebraska, Indiana. and even Alaska and Montana, where the winners could tip the balance in an Electoral College dispute.
To wrest control, Republicans need to win about 20 seats, but even the House Republican leadership has downplayed their chances. Strategists say Trump is a drag on the top of the Republican ticket. Despite Republicans recruiting more minority and female candidates to compete with Democrats in suburban districts, the battle for the House is something of an afterthought in the races for control of the White House and Senate.
“A rising tide lifts all boats, and right now it appears that the Democratic tide is rising,” said Michael Steel, Republican strategist and former senior aide to the House Republican leadership.
Steel said it has less to do with Pelosi’s planning than it does with the national political environment. “I attribute the alleged success of his efforts to keep the majority more to Trump’s failures than to his declared leadership,” he said.
Those close to Pelosi’s political operation did not always join in his prediction that the Democrats would easily maintain control.
Trump was not on the ballot when they won the majority two years ago, and freshmen are often the most vulnerable to defeat as they seek reelection, especially this class of lawmakers who now have to run alongside the president in districts. often off limits to Democrats.
Pelosi went ahead with the risky House vote to impeach the president in late 2019 for his dealings with Ukraine only to see the Republican-controlled Senate vote to acquit him of the charges in a highly charged political environment in early 2019. this year.
When the coronavirus pandemic struck, the Capitol was abruptly closed. Pelosi designed a rule change to allow the House to vote by proxy and work online, but it left lawmakers away from Washington. Now Pelosi is waiting for a solid Covid-19 aid package with the Trump administration, another risky move, seeking a settlement of more than $ 2 trillion that Republicans do not want to give.
Representative Cheri Bustos, a Democrat from Illinois, who is the chair of the party’s campaign arm in the House, said she advised new legislators not to get swept up in the national political debate, but to “run as if they were running. for mayor ”- meeting with voters and responding to issues close to home.
“When we set out to do this job in 2019, we had no idea what this cycle would be like,” said Lucina Guinn, executive director of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee.
The goal, he said, was to make the incumbents “as strong as possible” and at the same time recruit new candidates “to establish a great battlefield.”
Money helps. Pelosi is on her way to being a billion dollar fundraiser for her party, a staggering sum over nearly two decades in leadership.
In this election cycle, it raised $ 227.9 million for Democrats, most of it for the House campaign arm, but it also paid $ 4 million for Biden from an August event and sent nearly $ 5 million to state parties. .
“We are ready,” Pelosi said.
He said he thinks Democrats would sweep if the election were today, but there is still a week to go. “It doesn’t keep me awake from the point of view of worrying about it,” she said, “but it wakes me up early to do something about it.”
It’s another surprising twist that the Affordable Care Act, which helped cost Pelosi a majority in the House in the 2010 election after Democrats passed “Obamacare,” is now a political calling card for used to win over Trump voters during the Covid-19 crisis.
Voters have come to trust the health care law guarantees that those with pre-existing health conditions can access insurance and parents can keep their adult children on family policies. A decade after President Barack Obama signed into law the ACA, Republicans are still trying to undo it, including in a court case that heads to the Supreme Court a week after the election.
“Progressive ideas are really popular, not just with progressives but also with moderate voters, with independent voters and maybe even some Republican voters,” said Rep. Pramila Jayapal, D-Washington, co-chair of the progressive caucus.
As Pelosi of California becomes an even more public presence for the party, Republicans run countless campaign ads against her. But he also has a following of those who celebrate his high-profile run-ins with Trump. Since the spring Covid-19 crisis, he has appeared 20 times on Sunday morning news shows and conducted more than 150 national television and radio interviews, his office said.
“I would not miss an opportunity, on behalf of my colleagues, to make sure there is clarity on where we are coming from on some of these issues,” he said.
She plans to run again for president, if the Democrats keep control of the House: “Definitely.”
But that’s for later. Pelosi notes that experts have suggested that Democrats will win between five and 15 seats in the House.
“Our goal was originally to keep the Chamber,” he said. “Anything we get after that will be a further improvement.”
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