Just to be clear, I am a Democrat who want Democrats to ideally hold all 3 Chambers of congress and possibly make gains. However, I worry Dems may fail to take a look in the mirror if the lose the US House because there were several errors they made around the margins that could def cost them.
1. Playing the Gerrymandering Game very poor. The classic example would be New York vs Florida. In New York, Democrat's gerrymander was extremely messy due to incumbent demands, and that is arguably the main reason it got struck down, not the partisan lopsidedness. Districts on their previous map such as NY-10 and NY-17 were absolutely absurd whereas in DeSantis's map, the districts are far cleaner and make geographic sense, even if it results in a lopsided map. There were so many ways Democrats could've passed cleaner gerrymanders in NY and MD that would've had a very good chance of passing legal muster, if only they hadn't heeded to frankly absurd incumbent demands.
Furthermore, some of the people they nominated for redistricting commissions in states such as Colorado and Arizona were quite toxic. In Arizona, it quickly became clear the main Dem and the tiebreaker really began to dislike eachother after the Dems didn't get the map they wanted to and so they basically gave up on seriously trying to make districts like AZ-01 or AZ-06 bluer and basically allowed a Republican gerrymander lite to pass.
2. Nancy Pelosi. and leadership generally. I get she's effective at courting votes but she's a huge lightning rod for Dems, a terrible messenger, and a generally unpopular figure. Republicans are much better at turning over leadership a bit ironically and tend to nominate younger more charismatic voices to lead their caucus. I think people like Nancy Pelosi can be very isolating to a large chunk of the population too since she literally is Rs defintion of the liberal elite which seems to be a huge point of attack against Dems.
3. Spending heavily favors incumbent House Dems even though if Dems want to maintain control, they'll probably need to pick up a few competitive seats (since redistricting costs them a few and not all incumbents in seemingly competitive races will ultimately survive). The lack of Dem investment in seats such as AZ-01, NY-22, and NM-02 is really upsetting even though I'd argue all 3 of those seats could be decisive.
The one thing I do give Dems credit for is overall their slate of candidates in swing seats, both incumbents and newcomers, is quite strong with a few notable exceptions (Christy Smith). No matter what you're never gonna get a perfect slate of A tier recruits for every competitive House seat, but there aren't really many potentially competitive races they outright threw away because of a bad recruit, especially when compared to Rs.
I feel like too often Dems let the internal power structure of their party and trying to protect incumbents/leadership or whatever costs them in terms of raw electoral results around the edges, and as someone who wants the Democrats in charge of the House, I find it frustrating. I really hope some inside the Democratic Party begin to realize this and can possibly adjust their messenging, strategies, and optics accordingly.
Well, here we are.
