So many Democrat senators wanted to vent their disappointment over failing to win back the Senate majority that Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer held a rare Sunday conference call to give them another opportunity to express their concerns, The Hill reported on Wednesday.
The senators spent some 90 minutes suggesting what they must do to be more competitive in rural states, where Republicans have an advantage.
“We just got to do a better job of reaching out,” said Montana Sen. Jon Tester, who represents a state where the Democrat governor was soundly defeated by a Republican.
He was confident Democrats can turn the tide, but warned “it’s not going to be easy and it’s not going to happen overnight.”
One Democrat senator said, “We shouldn’t have lost this election. You can explain it away but the reality is Republicans have been beating the hell out of government since the Reagan years and saying [Democrats] are the defender of bad government and that’s what the American people believe.”
Democrats picked up just one seat, despite predictions that they’d win the majority.
Democrats still have a chance to gain control of the Senate if they win two January runoff races in Georgia, but the odds against them defeating both Sens. David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler are long.
One senator said the “two most common knocks on our candidates were socialism and defund the police,” and several centrists talked about the need to come up with a better way to respond to the socialism tag.
Senators said Schumer stayed quiet for the most part, giving his colleagues a chance to speak without interruption.
The minority leader said the feedback was constructive and emphasized that Democrats achieved their main goal by ousting President Donald Trump from the White House.
Brian Freeman ✉
Brian Freeman, a Newsmax writer based in Israel, has more than three decades writing and editing about culture and politics for newspapers, online and television.
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