DNC Chair Perez: Post-Trump Special Election Losses Mean ‘We’re Going to Take 50 Seats’

Thursday on ABC’s “The View,” Democratic National Committee chairman Tom Perez said the close votes in recent special election losses for the Democratic Party meant if they were to continue taking their margins of losing down by 20 points, they were “going to take 50 seats.”

Perez said, “I was disappointed Tuesday, but this was Newt Gingrich’s old seat. Democrats haven’t won there in 37 years.”

He continued, “All of the seats that have been in play, the congressional seats are beat red districts. You appoint cabinet secretaries from beat red districts, so you don’t lose ground in the House. We lost the Price seat in Atlanta by 24 points in November, and we cut that margin by 20 points. The Kansas seat a few months back, we were supposed to lose that by 30 and lost by single digits. There are 71 congressional districts right now that are more competitive than the Georgia 6th race.”

“We need to take 24 seats to take the House. If you look at our history, the last three times we have had single party control sometimes it was Democrats and sometimes Republicans,” Perez added. “The following midterm election the party out of power won 28 seats. If some of you read Nate Silver, if we keep taking the margins down by 20 points like we have done, we’re going to take 50 seats. You know what, history — past is not always prologue. I don’t come to you today saying I guarantee that, but what I do know is I think our values are spot on.”

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