Van Hollen: Keeping Democratic control of the House Tuesday ‘not a lost cause’

The House Democratic campaign chief said Sunday that holding the House “is not a lost cause.”

“I
think all these Washington pundits are going to be surprised,” the
chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, Rep. Chris
Van Hollen (D-Md.), said on “Fox News Sunday.” “I believe Democrats are
going to hold onto the House.”

Leading political prognosticators are now coalescing around the
view that House Democrats are headed for a blowout loss on Tuesday,
with a few predicting they will lose as many as 60 or 70 seats.
Republicans need a net gain of 39 seats to win control of the House.

Van Hollen cited “strong” early voting figures for Democrats as a
reason for his optimism and said there remains “a large pool of
undecided voters” who have not broken decidedly for Republicans, as
many analysts predicted.

While he insisted that he’s “not acting as if everything is great,”
Van Hollen said the key difference between 2010 and 1994, when
Democrats last suffered a sweeping congressional defeat, was that polls
show voters are dissatisfied with Democrats but do not see the GOP as a
viable governing alternative.

The National Republican Congressional Committee fired back that Van Hollen is in denial. “They say the first step in recovery is admitting you have a
problem, yet Chris Van Hollen and his party are still completely oblivious to
the intervention they’re about to receive from voters on Tuesday night,” said NRCC spokesman Paul Lindsay.
“The message the American people are prepared to send to Democrats has nothing
to do with ‘secret campaign money’ and everything to do with the spending
addiction in Washington that has stifled any hope of job creation in this
country.”

This post was updated at 10:45 a.m.