Democrats have 'nothing to celebrate' after midterms, says Dem strategist: 'Everybody failed the voters'

CNN political commentator Hilary Rosen was asked on Sunday to respond to her previous midterm prediction and said that while her pessimism about the Senate was "wrong," Democrats still had "nothing to celebrate."

CNN "State of the Union" host Dana Bash played a clip of Rosen's appearance on the show before the midterm elections. Rosen predicted Democrats did not listen to voters during this election cycle on Nov. 6.

"My pessimism about the Senate was wrong," Rosen said. "I think senators ran – we had incumbent senators running really good races against candidates who were weaker, and I think that the house actually was saved by abortion, and I didn’t expect that." 

"But, look, we lost the House," she added. "This is nothing to celebrate. We’re still going to have really horrible committee chairmen taking on issues that the American public do not care about. We’re going to have divided ugly government for the next two years. So I’m not celebrating the way some Democrats are, but I do think we’re in a stronger position than certainly I predicted."

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Democrats ended up maintaining control of the Senate as Republicans gained control of the House. 

"Democrats didn’t have a good message on the economy, but Republicans’ message sort of failed, came up short, too. Republicans I think depended on too much of kind of the culture wars. They didn’t actually have a good solution on the economy. I think maybe everybody failed the voters," Rosen added. 

Kristen Soltis Anderson, a Republican strategist and pollster, also said Republicans couldn't capitalize on the economy. 

"I wouldn’t discount the importance of the economy in this election. The problem was Republicans weren’t able to capitalize on it enough. If you looked at the exit polls, if you were a voter who thought the economy was in bad shape, Republicans won those voters. But if you thought the economy was not so good, those should have been Republican voters and they still broke for Democrats," she said. 

Rosen told Bash earlier this month that Democrats were going to have a "bad night."

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"I’m a loyal Democrat, but I am not happy," Rosen said. "I just think that we did not listen to voters in this election, and I think we’re going to have a bad night. This conversation is not going to have much impact on Tuesday, but I hope it has an impact going forward, because when voters tell you over and over and over again that they care mostly about the economy, listen to them."  

The CNN panelists also discussed Georgia's runoff election and former National Coalitions Director for Biden-Harris 2020 Ashley Allison said she was confident Democrat Sen. Raphael Warnock would win.  

Georgia's runoff election will be held on Dec. 8, but early voting in the state started over the weekend.  

Rosen argued that while the balance of power was not at stake ahead of the runoff, "governing" is at stake.

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"What people forget is two senators that were so much trouble for Democrats over the last two years, which is why there was a significant challenge in passing legislation, were Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema," Rosen said. "Those two senators are actually up for re-election." 

"They’re going to be a lot tougher for Democrats in the caucus this next year," she added. "And so you know, getting Raphael Warnock back there, getting a little margin on that vote is going to be really important for Democrats. And that might matter for things like nominations and other things that President Biden is going to try to do."