Why the Democrats Just Lost the House

Across the country, Democratic leaders are looking at deep-blue New York and seeing red. For good reason.

The party just came up agonizingly short in its attempt to buck history and retain a majority in the House of Representatives — a failure that is directly attributable to decisions New York Democrats made this year that cost four House seats and wasted tens of millions of dollars in national party resources that could have been deployed to win seats in other states.

Some elections are determined in the mad rush of a campaign’s final days. And others are effectively over before they begin. In New York, the Democratic supermajority in control of the legislature made two fatal mistakes driven by arrogance and incompetence that sealed the fate of its congressional candidates many months ago. Those mistakes point up the dangers of one-party rule, especially when it becomes so entrenched and beholden to its most activist wing — and in this case causes some Democrats to vote Republican just to break that stranglehold.

The first mistake: After an independent commission created by voters failed to agree on a new map of House districts in New York, Democrats got greedy. Instead of drawing maps that were modestly advantageous, they went whole hog — producing an extremely gerrymandered map that invited a successful legal challenge.

Second, the legislature apparently decided that voter concerns about crime and disorder were nothing to worry about. After three decades of falling crime, Democrats had gotten complacent and disconnected, and failed to recognize that the bail reforms they passed in 2019, eliminating cash bail for most misdemeanors and nonviolent felonies, were deeply unpopular.

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