Vice President Joe Biden made a peculiar prediction to House Democrats at their annual retreat in Baltimore this week that left many scratching their heads: that House Democrats, who are 30 seats from having a majority in Congress, can win back the gavel in 2016.
“I think the House can win,” Biden told House Democrats, who responded with subdued applause.
Biden, who acknowledged he is an “optimist,” is probably wrong, and most Democrats know it, including House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, who has been looking for ways to win back the House since 2010.
House Democrats this November have too few opportunities on the electoral map to take over enough GOP-held seats to get to a majority of 218 members. Their representation in the House, at 188 members, has shrunk to the lowest in 70 years.
But Pelosi confidently declared on Thursday that in the 2018 midterm election, Democrats will be able to win back the majority for the 115th session that starts in January of 2019. That’s two elections from now.
“I don’t know if we’ll have it in one more year,” Pelosi said. “I feel absolutely certain we’ll have it in three years.”
Democrats believe they can increase their numbers this year by winning some of the approximately 15 GOP seats that race ratings experts list as toss up or lean Democrat. If they managed to win half of the very competitive seats while not losing any they now hold, the party would be within 22 seats of winning back the majority.
Democrats won 31 seats in 2006 to take back the gavel from Republicans, who at that time had fallen out of favor with voters thanks to growing antiwar sentiment and series of GOP corruption scandals.
It would take another wave election, but Democrats could do it, especially if a Republican president is in the White House, say experts. Midterm elections in Congress usually benefit the opposing party of the president.
“If it’s a GOP president, it’s possible,” David Wasserman, House editor for the Cook Political Report, told the Washington Examiner.
Pelosi said Thursday that she’s not concerned about the party’s current deficit in the House. She pointed out that Democrats had lost seven seats in the 2004 election due to redistricting, but nonetheless won back the House in 2006.
In 2010, Pelosi said, Republicans won a net gain of 63 seats without any help from redistricting. Instead, the GOP coasted to victory with the help of the newly formed Tea Party coupled with voter opposition to the liberal agenda of President Obama and congressional Democrats.
“It’s just that we had a tide, and they had a tide,” Pelosi said. “And we can have a tide again.”
But some experts say 2018 may be too soon for a Democratic comeback.
Nathan Gonzales, editor and publisher of the Rothenberg and Gonzales Political Report, said if a Democrat wins the White House, the party would have to pick up 25 seats this election to put the in position to win the majority in 2018.
“Over the last 100 years, the most House seats a President’s party has gained in a midterm election is nine, according to Vital Statistics on Congress,” Gonzales wrote earlier this year. “Of course if Republicans win the White House in 2016, then the House majority would nearly certainly be in play in the midterm elections.”
The president’s party has lost an average of 30 House seats in midterm elections dating back to 1914, Gonzales wrote.
