Katty Kay

I can say that it's podcast like, oh, Christ, we can never come back from this.

And they were getting super depressed on Friday.

How much of a blow?

Because now I'm coming around to having had three days and maybe it's just looking at it differently.

How much of a blow do you think this is to Democrats in the midterms?

Yeah, which is never going to do by November, guys.

That's what a Democratic member of Congress told me, that actually it would give them two seats.

So they'll lose two seats, effectively.

Yeah, I think you're right.

I think Democrats were feeling really glum last Friday.

And this week at the beginning of the week, they're feeling a little bit less desperate about this.

And I think their thinking had been like, damn, we were on track to win something like 20 to 30 seats if this is a good year for us in the midterm elections in November and have a handsome majority in the House.

But a Democratic strategist who I spoke to over the weekend and looked at their polling numbers, they still think they're on track to win...

seven to 12 seats, something like that.

They still think Democrats take back control of the House.

Even with what happened in Virginia, they still are looking at it, but it's tighter.

It makes it tighter for them.

Of course, their argument is, well, Republicans don't think they can win, so they rigged the map to make it almost impossible for

for Democrats to win, but that's a hard argument for Democrats to make because they were the ones doing the gerrymandering in Virginia.

So I'm not sure they can quite take the moral high ground on this one.