DCCC Chair: ‘If the Midterms Were Held Now, They Would Lose the Majority’

Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) waves a gavel during the first session of the 117
TASOS KATOPODIS/POOL/AFP via Getty Images

Rep. Sean Patrick Maloney (D-NY), the head of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC), gave a stark warning to vulnerable Democrats last week during a closed-door lunch, saying the Democrats could lose the House, according to a report.

“If the midterms were held now, they would lose the majority,” Maloney said according to multiple people familiar with the conversation, Politico reports.

The report noted this comes after Maloney saw new polling showing the Democrats have been falling behind Republicans on generic ballots by six points. Last month, the DCCC commissioned polling that asked 1,000 likely midterm voters about a generic ballot in four dozen battleground races across the country.

Maloney, based on the polling, is now advising his party ahead of the midterms to change their messaging to be more friendly to swing vogters. Maloney is now saying Democrats should promote President Joe Biden’s agenda.

However, previous reports showed that swing voters and most of the Democrats’ base do not know what Biden has actually accomplished.

In early July, a pro-Biden super PAC released a memo after conducting focus groups in battleground states showing that Joe Biden’s voters overwhelmingly had no idea about any of the Biden accomplishments, which the group claims would impact the midterms.

Rep. Debbie Dingell (D-MI), who also co-leads caucus messaging, has been sounding the alarms on the Democrats’ messaging tactics as well, according to the report.

Dingell told a group of 50 House Democrat colleagues that they need to do better with explaining what the Democrats have done to help the economy after the coronavirus took hold of it. Dingell said, “We’re not breaking through,” according to people in the room who told Politico.

DCCC Executive Director Tim Persico told Politico in an interview, “We are not afraid of this data. … We’re not trying to hide this.” He added, “If [Democrats] use it, we’re going to hold the House. That’s what this data tells us, but we gotta get in action.”

Persico also mentioned that the polling he is seeing suggests that infrastructure is “wildly popular” and that nothing in the poll he saw “suggests anything about altering our agenda. It’s about emphasis.”

But, a Monmouth University poll previously reported on by Breitbart News showed that only 42 percent of the respondents said that the proposed plan should be passed. However, at the time, there was no plan released.

The so-called infrastructure bill was released to the public on Sunday only after Breitbart News exclusively obtained the legislation and released a copy.

“The Democrat majority has given America rising costs, rising crime, and rising illegal border crossings. It’s nice to see Democrats publicly acknowledge that voters are rejecting their socialist agenda,” National Republican Congressional Committee Spokesman Mike Berg said in an emailed statement.

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