FiveThirtyEight now projects The Last Unresolved House Race Of 2018, the California 21st is likely to be the 40th Democratic pickup. Democrat TJ Cox will turn out Republican Rep. David Valadao.
NBC News reports, Democrats smash Watergate record for House popular vote in midterms:
Democrats won the House with the largest margin of victory in a midterms election for either party, according to NBC News election data.
While votes are still being tallied, Democratic House candidates currently hold an 8,805,130 vote lead over Republicans as of Monday morning. The Democrats’ national margin of victory in House contests smashes the previous midterms record of 8.7 million votes in 1974, won just months after President Richard Nixon resigned from office in disgrace amid the Watergate scandal.
Of the more than 111 million votes cast in House races nationwide, Democrats took 53.1 percent — retaking control of the House of Representatives by flipping nearly 40 seats — while Republicans received 45.2 percent of the vote.
Brent Budowsky writes at The Hill, House Dems won a historic mandate (excerpt):
In the most important midterm election in a century, after voter turnout of epic and historic proportions, House Democrats won a popular vote majority of more than 9 million votes. By contrast, Donald Trump lost the 2016 popular vote by some 3 million votes, and is now viewed as a great divider and dangerous pariah by peoples and leaders of democratic nations throughout the world.
Politics is about power. Effective January 2019, no bill will be enacted into law, and no dollar will be authorized or appropriated, without the support of the Democratic House. House Democrats have won a dramatic mandate to propose — and ultimately pass — legislation to lift the health, wages and lives of Americans, as well as to set the stage to elect the next Democratic president and Democratic Senate in 2020, when most senators running for reelection will be Republicans.
Politics is about democracy. Effective January 2019, the majority views of Americans on major issues will no longer by silenced, ignored or held in contempt by a one-party state in Washington. Voters granted House Democrats a powerful mandate to restore checks and balances to American democracy.
Politics is about community. House Democrats are America’s team — a picture perfect reflection of the diversity and public spirit that makes our nation such a special place.
House Democrats were granted a mandate from voters to restore civility, decency and community to public life. They were granted a mandate to reject and defeat the politics of division, hatred and fear. And they were granted a mandate to better the lot of all workers, regardless of their race, religion or gender.
House Democrats were granted a mandate to improve health care, to lift wages, to protect the environment and to support public education. They were granted a mandate to make tax cuts fair and to advance civil rights, equal rights, voting rights and human rights. This is what House Democrats championed to win a landslide victory in 2018.
House Democrats were granted a mandate from voters to defend America from the Russian attack against our democracy, to investigate corruptions by those who treat public service as an ATM to make money for themselves, and to expose and defeat those who would destroy the right to vote, which is the very heart of Americanism.
House Democrats know they were elected to bring change that ends partisan Republican abuse. Many were elected from districts that have rarely elected Democrats to Congress in recent years. They should and will reach out to work with reasonable Republicans when possible, not only to strengthen their prospects for reelection but because it is right — without sacrificing core values or first principles.
House Democrats won a dramatic landslide and historic mandate in 2018 because they represent a new generation of Americans who want to return our civic life to a nobility of purpose, unity, decency, patriotism and idealism. Americans voted for these principles in droves in 2018, and they will vote for them again in 2020.
The first bill (of many) is the reform of our electoral process. House Democrats to unveil political reform legislation as ‘H.R. 1’:
House Democratic leaders are set to publicly unveil on Friday the outline of a broad political overhaul bill that will include provisions for public financing of elections, voting rights reforms and new ethics strictures for federal officials.
The bill has been in the works for months as part of Democrats’ “For the People” campaign platform, a framework that helped them win the House majority in this month’s midterm elections.
Numerous outside groups aligned with Democrats have pushed the party’s House leaders to schedule a reform bill as their first order of business, and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) announced before the election that the bill would be designated “H.R. 1” — a symbolic title meant to emphasize its importance, even if it is unlikely to be the first piece of legislation to get a House vote in the new Congress.
On Friday, Pelosi, whom Democrats nominated this week as their next speaker, will unveil elements of the bill Friday alongside principal author Rep. John Sarbanes (D-Md.) and several members of the freshman class.
Elements of the legislation, according to a draft outline reviewed by The Washington Post, include new donor disclosure requirements for political organizations, a system to multiply small donations to political campaigns, mandating a new ethical code for the Supreme Court, ending most first-class travel for federal officeholders, and a broad effort to expand voting access and reduce partisan gerrymandering.
Pelosi and Sarbanes sketched out parts of the bill in a Washington Post op-ed last week:
[L]et’s rein in the unaccountable “dark money” unleashed by the Supreme Court’s Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission decision by requiring all political organizations to disclose their donors and by shutting down the shell game of big-money donations to super PACs. We must also empower hard-working Americans in our democracy by building a 21st-century campaign-finance system — combining small-donor incentives and matching support — to increase and multiply the power of small donors. Wealthy special interests shouldn’t be able to buy more influence than the workers, consumers and families who should be our priority in Washington.
Next, let’s make sure that when public servants get to Washington, they serve the public. Restoring the public’s trust means closing the revolving door between government and private industries, and imposing strong new ethics laws to stop officials from using their public office for personal gain. To do so, we will expand conflict-of-interest laws, ban members of Congress from serving on for-profit boards, revamp the oversight authority of the Office of Government Ethics and prohibit public servants from receiving bonus payments from their former employers to enter government. We’ll curb the influence of high-powered Washington insiders by closing lobbyist registration loopholes that allow big-money power brokers and foreign actors to operate in the shadows. That way, well-connected special interests won’t be able to steer the policy agenda away from the priorities of the American public.
Finally, let’s make it easier, not harder, to vote. Since the Supreme Court took the teeth out of the Voting Rights Act, Republican political operatives have increasingly turned to blatant schemes to make it more difficult for the Americans left behind to participate in elections — a narrow agenda all too often targeted at communities of color.
We must renew the Voting Rights Act to protect every citizen’s access to the ballot box and restore the vital safeguard of pre-clearance requirements for areas with a history of voter suppression. We will promote national automatic voter registration, bolster our critical election infrastructure against foreign attackers, and put an end to partisan gerrymandering once and for all by establishing federal guidelines to outlaw the practice. No American should face hours-long lines, broken voting machines or rules rigged to keep their vote from being counted in our elections.
These are the reforms that will ultimately change the balance of power in Washington. When we get dark money out of politics, clean up corruption and ensure fair elections, we will dismantle the ability of special interests to stack the deck of our democracy and our economy against hard-working Americans.
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