Mark Shields:

I mean, that's refreshing, optimism.

(LAUGHTER)

No, I think it — I think it was a — it was a significant election.

What I was most alarmed by was the president's announcement that it was a great victory for Republicans.

(LAUGHTER)

The Republicans lost more seats than they did under Ronald Reagan or George W. Bush, both of whom accepted the fact that the party had suffered a shellacking.

And I was particularly struck by the president's reaction at the post-press conference. Gene McCarthy, the late senator from Minnesota, once described a mean political opponent as being the type of person who, after the battle is over, come down from the hills and shoot the wounded.

And that's exactly what Donald Trump did the next day. He went after, named and shamed Republicans who had lost. The lone black Republican woman in the Congress, Mia Love, he went after personally and said, Mia showed me no love, because — in that sense, I had just never seen anything like it.

The election was about Donald Trump; 65 percent of the voters said it was about him. And his dominance of American politics to me was complete, in the sense that states, you could almost trace the — track the Republican vote for Senate or major office with Donald Trump's favorable job rating in that state, I mean, Ohio, for example.

And I think — I think the victory — David and I disagree on this. I think it was enormous personal victory and political victory for Nancy Pelosi. I really do. She was the one who passed health care in 2009, almost single-handedly. And the party paid for it in 2010.

And, ironically, in 2018, it was the issue that rode that the Democrats rode back. And I thought she showed iron discipline by keeping the party on that issue. And I think it's — I think it's significant.

Thirty-three or 34 women elected to the House for the first time who are Democrats.