Last night in a letter to her caucus Pelosi called the election a “challenging” one for Democrats.

It may turn out to be more challenging than she thought.

I haven’t verified the following independently but Adrian Gray used to work at the RNC. I doubt he’d tweet these numbers if he wasn’t sure about them:

416 House races appear decided
Democrats 212
Republicans 204 (+10)

19 Seats remain, GOP lead in 10

To win 218 (and House majority), GOP would need to win all the districts they are leading in, plus:
CA-25
GA-07
PA-17
UT-04

— Adrian Gray (@adrian_gray) November 5, 2020

Would Biden even want to be president knowing he’ll have to negotiate with Mitch McConnell — and Kevin McCarthy? If those remaining districts flip red and the GOP gets to 218, he might as well walk out today and say, “Trump’s right, I cheated. He won. I’m going to go play golf.”

Don’t get too excited, as Gray notes that the math isn’t in Republicans’ favor in those remaining districts. But a verrrrry narrow Democratic majority in the House will make things hard on Pelosi.

The problem that GOP has, a number of the CD's they currently lead in (ie, NY-03, NJ-02) are likely to break away from them.

— Adrian Gray (@adrian_gray) November 5, 2020

Any path to GOP House is also not at all likely. It looks like they will end up with 209-214 seats.
(The latter resulting in smallest House majority since New Deal).

— Adrian Gray (@adrian_gray) November 5, 2020

Even if her party defies the odds and ends up with a 50/50 Senate plus a Biden administration, she’ll have no choice but to legislate from the center. A handful of Dem moderates is all it’ll take to torpedo any progressive legislation. (And vice versa, without GOP help.) WaPo has an enjoyable piece today about how Pelosi was so confident that Dems would have comfortable majorities in both chambers that she was plotting how to use budget reconciliation in the Senate to avoid a GOP filibuster of reforms to ObamaCare and pandemic relief. In reality, it’s Democrats who are likely to be in the minority in the upper chamber. And Pelosi may not even be able to muster the votes from her own caucus now for ambitious reforms.

The point was made yesterday but it’s worth making it again: A Biden win with a redder Congress is probably the worst possible outcome for the hard left. They have no room to maneuver on policy now, and Trump’s defeat deprives them of a foil they’ve used to radicalize some mainstream liberals. They would have relished total Democratic control of government provided that Dems had a big majority, and they could have lived with total Republican control of government as a rallying point for war against Trump. But now they’re stuck.

Team Biden is already having to rethink some of its cabinet nominations, although I suspect they’re not having to think hard:

Republicans’ likely hold on the Senate is forcing Joe Biden’s transition team to consider limiting its prospective Cabinet nominees to those who Mitch McConnell can live with, according to people familiar with the matter…

A source close to McConnell tells Axios a Republican Senate would work with Biden on centrist nominees but no “radical progressives” or ones who are controversial with conservatives.

The Biden agenda would be severely restricted by GOP control, the source added: “It’s going to be armed camps.”

Having to work with McConnell will be headache for Biden but it also cures him of a headache he was facing on the left. Remember Bernie Sanders wanting to be Labor secretary and Elizabeth Warren eyeing the Treasury slot? If Sleepy Joe had denied them those slots despite having a Democratic majority in the Senate, the left would have revolted. Now that it looks like McConnell will be in charge, he has a perfect excuse to go with the sort of mainstream centrist nominees whom he prefers anyway.

A week ago the expectation was that Republicans would be consumed today by bitter recriminations over how Trump’s presidency ended up torching the party nationally. Instead it’s Democrats who are at each other’s throats — after an election in which they’ve probably won the presidency, retained the House, and still have a very outside chance at control of the Senate. Dem House members are reportedly furious at the head of the DCCC, Rep. Cheri Bustos (who just barely managed to hang on in her race), for their poor showing. How could control of the House be in doubt when the party was expected to hold its 2020 majority and possibly add seats? “We had all the money in the world,” said one Dem strategist to the Daily Beast about the Democratic collapse. “It was incredibly disappointing.”

But it’s not just Bustos who’s under pressure. Pelosi herself may be on the chopping block:

“Pelosi needed to hammer Trump but instead she chose to let him slide,” said one former senior Democratic aide. “Last night should have been a bloodbath for Republicans.”…

“It’s time for Democrats to elevate a new generation of leadership in both the House and the Senate,” one of the Democrats told The Hill. “Americans are clearly afraid of ‘socialism,’ want safe streets and neighborhoods and to vote for people who they believe will help put more money in their pockets.

“While Democratic policies can adequately address those issues,” the lawmaker added, “our messaging mechanism clearly cannot.”

Supposedly there’s a coalition forming in the caucus to nominate Hakeem Jeffries for Speaker instead. I wouldn’t get too excited about seeing Pelosi potentially ousted and humiliated: She’s faced insurgent challenges to her leadership before and always put them down easily, and Jeffries has already said he’s not interested. Rather, just enjoy the fingerpointing on Team Blue that’s happening on a day when Joe Biden will probably be projected to have won the presidential election by media outlets. I recommend reading the Daily Beast piece in full, which has some fun quotes from Dem moderates complaining that the socialists scared off voters with their radicalism and progressives countering that wishy-washy centrist Democratic policies made voters more willing to stick with the populist Trump.

I’ll leave you with this, which gave Ed and I a good laugh when he texted it to me earlier. You remember what Robby Mook’s last job was, don’t you? Sure you do. He’s got the Midas touch.

The Democratic Super PAC in charge of House races is going to face serious questions about how it lost seats when projected to pick them up.

House Majority PAC’s president is Robby Mook.

— Ryan Grim (@ryangrim) November 5, 2020