The party is expected to pick up five seats at best — a fraction of the 25 they need. Dems' drive to retake House falters

Nancy Pelosi has spent much of the past two years proclaiming that Democrats had a great shot at reclaiming the House and returning the speaker’s gavel to her hands.

But her drive to regain the majority for Democrats is on the verge of a complete collapse. Democrats are expected to pick up five seats at best — a fraction of the 25 they need. On the eve of the election, some party officials are privately worried that Democrats might even lose ground and drop one or two seats to the Republican majority.


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It would mark an epic failure for a party that has a legitimate shot at keeping the presidency and the Senate on Tuesday. The inability of House Democrats to pick off a good number of seats from one of the most unpopular House majorities in modern history will cause a lot of soul-searching in the party come Wednesday.

So Democrats are already doing their postmortems on a House election cycle gone awry. What they’ll find in the political autopsy is Republican dominance in redistricting that created a GOP friendly map, a Medicare argument that didn’t totally pan out and an incumbent president who just wasn’t as popular as when he ran four years ago. They’ll also have to come to terms with the fact that they still can’t overcome the Republican advantage in campaign spending.

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POLITICO interviewed nearly two dozen of the top strategists, pollsters, ad makers, outside group operatives and party officials from both sides of the aisle who were intimately involved with the 2012 election, asking them to sketch out why the Democratic majority push fell short. In many cases, sources were granted anonymity in order to speak candidly about their assessments.

Here’s POLITICO’s look at why House Republicans will own the majority for another two years.

The Obama factor

The president may well win reelection, but there’s little question he hasn’t had the same kind of top-of-the-ticket pull demonstrated four years ago.

Unlike in 2008, when Barack Obama’s national numbers helped lift up Democratic congressional candidates across the map, the president has had far less impact this time around. And for the Democrats in conservative districts in the South and Rust Belt, Obama’s presence on the ballot has been more hurt than help.

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That dynamic, perhaps more than any other, Democrats say, kept them from stirring up the kind of wave conditions they needed to stage a House takeover this year. Races that would have drifted in the Democrats’ direction four years ago required far more of a push this time.

“There was a wave that was supporting us in many different ways in 2008, and obviously this was a very different election,” said Paul Maslin, a Democratic pollster.

Obama’s poor first debate performance also caused a downdraft for vulnerable House Democrats.

Just days prior to the debate, Democrats held a 48 percent to 45 percent lead over Republicans in a National Public Radio poll of the generic congressional ballot. Now, Republicans are holding a small lead in the RealClearPolitics average of generic ballot polls.

One of the biggest post-debate shifts happened in the race pitting smash-mouth tea party Rep. Allen West and Democrat Patrick Murphy in Florida. One Democratic pollster found that Obama and Murphy plummeted 5 points between private surveys conducted before and after the debate.

GOP cash juggernaut

For a party in the minority, Democrats didn’t perform poorly on the fundraising circuit — in fact, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee outraised the National Republican Congressional Committee $151 million to $135 million over the course of the election. Much of the success was owed to Pelosi, a legendary fundraiser who launched a vigorous nationwide cash dash in hopes of avenging a 2010 election that ended up being a painful referendum on her speakership.

But that didn’t mean Democrats had more money to spend.

Between July 1 and Oct. 31, the NRCC and allied outside groups outspent their Democratic counterparts $168 million to $131 million.

“Republicans were well-financed enough to defend their majority,” Maslin said.

The cash shortfall doesn’t compare to 2010, when Democrats found themselves swamped by conservative groups. Democrats credit House Majority PAC, a liberal group that was involved in congressional battles, with helping to provide a counterbalance to well-funded GOP organizations.

Still, there’s little question that the GOP cash edge made a difference. Republican groups spent big on defense in races in Indiana, New Hampshire and suburban Orlando, Fla., allowing the NRCC to focus heavily on offense.

“Certainly, Republicans were in a position where they were able to fund their offensive pickup opportunities,” said Brian Walsh, president of American Action Network, a leading conservative outside group.

Medicare didn’t make a difference

After Mitt Romney picked Paul Ryan as his No. 2 in August, Democrats were elated — DCCC Chairman Steve Israel even dubbed the Wisconsin congressman a “majority maker.”

The argument from Democrats: Ryan’s controversial plan to rewrite Medicare would scare seniors, who would rush to the polls to pull the lever against Republicans. It’s a bet that Democrats were willing to stake their hopes on: Sixty-four of the 123 TV ads the DCCC ran between Aug. 16 and Oct. 29 focused on Medicare.

Nearly three months after the Ryan pick was made, it’s clear that these attacks never really took hold.

Democrats credit Republicans — some of whom had been initially concerned about Ryan’s impact on down-ballot candidates — with launching a vigorous pushback on the issue, accusing Obama of including cuts to Medicare in his health care bill. By the time October was up, a Kaiser Family Foundation poll found Mitt Romney leading Obama on the question of who’s more likely to protect Medicare.

GOP redistricting dominance

From the moment the 2012 campaign began, the map was stacked against the Democrats.

Sweeping Republican statehouse gains in the midterms allowed the GOP to dominate the once-in-a-decade redistricting process. Republicans wielded the map-drawing power in 213 of the House’s 435 seats, with Democrats only controlling 44 districts.

That wide-ranging power allowed Republicans to strengthen districts for their majority. When the redistricting dust settled, 109 Republican seats were made safer, compared with 67 Democratic seats. Once-vulnerable Republicans like Pennsylvania Reps. Jim Gerlach and Patrick Meehan found themselves in easier districts.

“Structurally, they had a lot of places where they could reinforce incumbents,” said Dave Beattie, a Democratic pollster.

And when Democrats did control the map, they didn’t always use it to their advantage. Some party strategists, for example, are fuming at Democratic New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo for not signing off on a plan that would have ensured greater gains in the state. Party operatives now say they will be lucky if they break even in the Empire State on Tuesday.

Republicans also used line-drawing to weaken Democrats. One hundred and nine Democrats — including Georgia Rep. John Barrow and North Carolina Rep. Larry Kissell — found themselves in more competitive seats, compared with 96 Republicans.

Dems heading for the exits

Throughout 2011, and into the opening months of 2012, Democrats watched in horror as 27 incumbents announced they were calling it quits.

The makeup of the retirees was even more concerning — many of them were from conservative districts Obama would almost certainly lose.

Democrats now expect at least five of these vacated seats to turn Republican.

Particularly frustrating to Democrats was North Carolina Rep. Heath Shuler’s announcement in February that he wouldn’t seek reelection — an unusually late departure that left the party with little time to defend his seat. Republicans are favored to win the western North Carolina seat.

Republicans spent months publicly warning Shuler and other conservative Democrats, such as Reps. Mike Ross of Arkansas and Dan Boren of Oklahoma, that they would be facing tough reelection bids in an attempt to pressure them to leave.

Republicans, meanwhile, successfully pushed for some of their members to stay on. Shortly after the 2010 election, NRCC Chairman Pete Sessions met with Reps. Bill Young of Florida and Frank Wolf of Virginia and convinced them to forgo retirement.

The shrunken map

If there’s one dynamic that haunts Democratic strategists, it’s that they failed to put more seats in play.

Democrats essentially ceded the South and only succeeded in competing in a smattering of seats in Ohio, Pennsylvania and New Jersey. In other words, the party gave up on a pretty big swath of the country.

That put pressure on Democrats to bet big in three blue states — California, Illinois and New York. While Democrats are expected to notch wins in California and Illinois, it won’t come close to erasing the 25-seat gap separating the parties.

Democrats acknowledge that if they want to regain the majority, they’re going to have to find a way to play in more conservative districts — a blueprint that then-DCCC Chairman Rahm Emanuel embraced with success during his successful 2006 push to claim the Democratic majority.

“You have to recruit and compete nationally because you can’t just win in the safest seats in the country,” Beattie said. “You need to compete in seats that are on the other side of the playing field.”