If the 2022 midterm elections were held today, the Republican Party would win back the House of Representatives. At least that’s what Democratic Rep. Sean Patrick Maloney of New York seems to think.
Maloney, who is the head of the key Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC), reportedly issued the dire warning earlier this week, apparently alarming Democratic lawmakers, activists, and voters.
At her weekly Capitol press briefing Friday, Speaker of the House of Representatives Nancy Pelosi sought to downplay Democrats’ concerns.
Read more below.
Here’s What Pelosi Said
Pelosi said that Maloney was merely trying to energize his party, which controls both chambers of the U.S. Congress and the White House.
"You always have to run from behind. In terms of the specific, where he was zeroing in on: always run scared," Pelosi said, as reported by The Hill.
Maloney, she continued, was simply warning against complacency.
"You never run from the best-case scenario. There’re several scenarios here; that was one of them, and I think that’s a safe place to run from."
Obstacles
Democrats won control of the House in 2018, when they crushed Republicans across the country. In 2020, however, they lost 13 seats, despite polls predicting they would increase their majority.
To win in 2022, Democrats would have to defy history: The sitting president’s party typically suffers major losses in midterm elections, just like the GOP did in 2018 under then-sitting President Donald Trump.
On top of that, a handful of Democratic lawmakers in key states have already announced their intent to seek higher office or retire.
‘Authenticity’
Pelosi told reporters that "authenticity" will be key to keeping control of the lower chamber in the upcoming elections.
"They have their own connections to their own districts," Pelosi said of Democratic candidates, adding that "we always want to be cautious."
"I’m very confident that we will win the House," Pelosi concluded.
As The Hill noted, Pelosi — who formerly headed the California Democratic Party — engineered the Democrats’ electoral strategy that saw them win back the House in 2018 in what was described at the time as a "blue wave."
Democrats’ 2022 Strategy
Pelosi’s strategy for the upcoming elections is to accuse the Republican Party of seeking to defund the police, according to The Intercept.
Since last summer’s Black Lives Matter protests, when liberal activists called for cuts in police funding, Republican lawmakers have sought to paint the Democratic Party as the party of the radical, anti-law enforcement left.
Pelosi’s strategy, it seems, is to flip the script on the GOP and use their own messaging against them.
It remains unclear if progressives will endorse the tactic.
