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Why Is This Happening? The Chris Hayes Podcast

The Down-Ballot Democrats with Rep. Debbie Mucarsel-Powell

Why Is This Happening? The Chris Hayes Podcast

MS NOW, Chris Hayes

Msnbc, The Chris Hayes Podcast, Government, Politics, Chris Hayes, Why Is This Happening?, Withpod, Versant, Ms Now, News, Society & Culture, Versant Media

4.69.1K Ratings

🗓️ 1 December 2020

⏱️ 53 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

What happened to the down-ballot Democrats? Going into election day, Democrats were expecting to pick up seats and expand their control of the House. Instead, they suffered consequential blows, still managing to hold the majority but ultimately losing seats. It was a shock that launched a bevy of post-mortems trying to figure out what went wrong. For Florida Congresswoman Debbie Mucarsel-Powell it was impossible to sit back and listen as folks diagnosed from the sidelines what she had experienced firsthand; elected to office in part of the 2018 blue wave, Rep. Mucarsel-Powell lost her re-election bid this November. In fact, her majority-Hispanic district swung 22 points to Trump this year. While there are no straightforward clean cut answers about what unfolded in the election, Congresswoman Mucarsel-Powell offers a clear-eyed take of what she witnessed in Southern Florida and what she thinks the biggest lesson is for the Democratic Party.

Transcript

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0:00.0

After the election, when I saw what had happened,

0:04.1

the next day, immediately, there were all these people on Twitter,

0:08.3

people that have never even been to South Florida,

0:10.8

making assumptions and saying what had happened and why we lost.

0:15.4

Then I see members of my own caucus saying that we lost because we

0:21.1

didn't do enough on digital or because we didn't not condor us and it was just completely false.

0:25.3

And that's why I decided to tell my side of the story.

0:31.5

Hello and welcome to Wise is Happening with me, your host, Chris Aes.

0:38.7

Well, hopefully by the time you have heard this, you have enjoyed a safe Thanksgiving,

0:44.5

maybe some zooming with some relatives, maybe making a little less food than you normally do.

0:49.6

I am doing the turkey for the first time ever in my life this year,

0:53.6

which is currently brining in the refrigerator as I speak to you now.

0:58.0

So I hope everyone had a good and safe Thanksgiving.

1:01.2

You know, we continue to sift through the election and kind of what it all means, right?

1:08.8

And every election, every national election has a bunch of different stories concurrently

1:12.8

because it's a big and complicated country, particularly the election where

1:17.0

when all is said and done 158, 159 million people voted,

1:20.7

and in which every member of the House is up for election and you've got state reps and state senators,

1:25.5

you've got local offices, you've got Senate races.

1:28.0

And of course, you got the presidential.

1:29.9

There's lots of stories you could tell simultaneously about the same election that

1:33.6

push an opposite direction.

...

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