BREAKING NEWS: Nancy Pelosi calls Joe Biden 'president-elect' as she DEFENDS Democrats' performance saying they lost seats because Donald Trump was on the ballot - and he won't be again
Speaker Nancy Pelosi referred to Joe Biden as president-elect on Friday before the presidential race was formally called for the Democratic candidate.
'This morning it is clear that the Biden-Harris ticket will win the White House,' she said of Biden and his running mate Kamala Harris.
Biden took the lead in Pennsylvania and Georgia - two states President Donald Trump cannot win without - and it put him on the cusp of victory. But the race has not been called yet.
'How exciting it is to come before you today with Joe Biden having the tremendous mandate that he has,' Pelosi told reporters on Capitol Hill Friday morning during her weekly press conference. 'And that pretty soon the hyphen will be gone from vice president to President Elect Joe Biden - a happy day for our country.'
'Joe Biden is a unifyer, because he is determined to bring people together. Because he respects all points of view,' she added.
Speaker Nancy Pelosi referred to Joe Biden as president-elect even though the presidential race has yet to be called
Joe Biden, seen above with Jill Biden, took the lead in Pennsylvania and Georgia - two states Trump needs to win a second term
Pelosi also addressed Democratic losses in the House. The party kept its majority but it lost seats instead of picking up the five or so leaders predicted would swing their way.
The speaker blamed that on the fact President Trump was on the ballot – unlike in the 2018 midterm election, which returned Pelosi to the speaker’s chair.
‘We did not win every battle in the House but we did win the war,’ she said.
Pelosi argued Democrats lost House seats because President Trump was on the ballot on Tuesday night
She said of the 2018 contest compared to the 2020 election: ‘We won in districts, Trump districts, with Trump not on the ballot. The next election, he will be on the ballot and makes winning those districts a steeper climb.’
Pelosi came under fire from some of her members on a conference call Thursday, which turned into a three-hour battle between moderates and liberals on who was to blame for the poor showing in the election.
But she announced she will seek another term in the speaker's chair.
'I am wring to request your support to be re-elected as Speaker,' she wrote in a letter to Democratic colleagues obtained by Politico. 'I do so with utmost respect for the diverse viewpoints in our Democratic Caucus, the gravity of this role the urgency of the challenges ahead. I also do so with the great joy and appreciation to so many of you who have already offered your support.'
The letter came the day after House Democrats savaged Pelosi in a family venting session that featured yelling and crying lawmakers in the wake of the party's losses on Thursday.
And the drama on the three-hour conference call played out live on Twitter, as details were leaked to the Capitol Hill press corps, who tweeted all the wild details.
Rep. Abigail Spanberger, a Democrat from Virginia who narrowly won a second term on Tuesday night, yelled out her frustration, accusing party leaders of bowing to demand from the liberals, like members of 'The Squad.'
Democrats kept control of the House in this year's election but their majority shrank and it was moderate members of the party who lost. The final results aren't in but Democrats could loss up to 10 seats.
'We need to be pretty clear,' Spanberger said of election night results. 'It was a failure. It was not a success. We lost incredible members of Congress.'
'No one should say 'defund the police' ever again,' Spanberger said, referring to one of liberals' demands, Politico reported. 'Nobody should be talking about socialism.'
Spanberger, continued to unload on Democratic leaders, warning if the party kept up these tactics in 2022 election: 'We will get f****** torn apart.'
Rep. Abigail Spanberger, a moderate Democrat, ripped into party leaders on a conference call on Thursday, complaining liberal demands hurt them on Election Day
Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Rep. Cheri Bustos, the head of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, defended the party's actions on the election, noting they kept control of the House
Spanberger was hit with multiple attack ads accusing her of trying to 'defund the police' after she voted for a police reform bill. The issue was a heated one this summer during the mass of Black Lives Matters protests that swept the nation. President Donald Trump and Republicans countered the racial tension by accusing Democrats of not supporting police officers.
Pelosi pushed back against Spanberger though.
'I do disagree, Abigail, that it was a failure. We won the House,' the speaker said.
She also told lawmakers to come to her personally with any worries and gave out her personal cell phone number.
Meanwhile, one lawmaker who lost her race broke down and cried during the session.
Democratic Rep. Debbie Mucarsel-Powell of Florida, who was expected to win re-election, cried as she spoke and mentioned how people can't pronounce her name and then told her colleagues to stop being negative on Twitter, a Washington Post reporter tweeted.
As details from the conference call emerged in the Twitter feeds of Capitol Hill reporters, lawmakers demanded the guilty leakers be found - information that was immediately leaked to the press.
Rep. Hakeem Jeffries, a member of Democratic leadership, jumped into the call midway through to tell those on it to stop leaking. He also reminded them that reporters aren't their friends, the Post noted.
Rep. Pramila Jayapal, took it a step further and demanded Jeffries find the leakers.
There are 232 Democratic lawmakers and all of them could have been on the call, which is for all members of the party. Staff could have been listening too, which would make it harder to find the person or persons who were leaking.
'Some of my colleagues are literally live-leaking our internal Dem Caucus call right now to CNN, The Hill, NBC, Politico, etc,' Rep. Jared Huffman tweeted during the call. 'I've gotten texts from 3 different reporters asking me to live-leak juicy details to them. No. We (Dems and the media) need to stop this nonsense.'
Congresswoman Debbie Mucarsel-Powell (right, in the white face masks) chats with poll employees as a group of people line up to vote at the Westchester regional Library early morning on Election Day
Jayapal, who is the co-chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, defended the left wing of the party against the moderate attacks.
'Our base is turning out to help save this country,' she said.
And Rep. Rashida Tlaib, a squad member along with fellow Congresswomen Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ilhan Omar, Ayanna Pressley, defended their group, all of whom won re-election.
'Don't blame myself and others who are fighting for issues that matter to our communities,' she said. 'We need to do a real autopsy and dig through it' before attacking each other.
But Rep. Marc Veasey of Texas also voiced his frustration, saying the left's approach to defunding the police and banning fracking gave Republicans fuel for their attack ads.
Veasey said he had watched GOP 'commercial after commercial' using video footage of Democrats uttering the words, 'defund the police,' to great effect, The Hill newspaper reported.
The call was billed as a 'family session' but became a bitch fest between the liberal wing of the party and its more moderate members - all of whom were disappointed by the Democrats failure to win more seats. The party expected to pick up five or more on election night.
Rep. Cheri Bustos, who led the Democratic efforts to add to their House majority, defended her work. The Illinois Democrat, a moderate, barely won her own race.
She blamed the polls for misrepresenting the electorate.
'Something went wrong,' she said. 'They all pointed to one political environment -- but voters who turned out look a lot like 2016.'
House Democratic leaders were shaken up by Tuesday's results and said they would hold a postmortem review of the election strategy that went wrong.
Pelosi started off the call by pointing out their party held the House and Joe Biden was on the cusp of winning the White House.
'Though it was a challenging election, all of our candidates made us proud, but especially those in tough races. 'We held the House. Joe Biden is on a clear path to be the next President of the United States,' she said.
'We did not win every battle but we won the war,' she noted.
She ended the three-hour call with: 'Let there be peace on earth and let it begin with us.'
Rep. Pramila Jayapal demanded Democratic leaders find out who leaked details from the party's call
Democratic Rep. Rashida Tlaib defended The Squad from attacks by moderate lawmakers
Pelosi, meanwhile, is facing tough questions about her ability to win enough votes to retain her leadership, as moderates in the party plotted to back a challenger.
Democrats went into Tuesday night expecting to pad their majority in the House by marching deeper into President Trump's 2016 win territory, but instead Republicans made gains.
Already, two centrist Democrats in the House say they are contacting colleagues to round up support for House Democratic Caucus Chairman Hakeem Jeffries, a top Pelosi lieutenant, for Speaker in the next Congress, according to The Hill.
Several moderate House Dems only won tough re-elections after vowing not to back Pelosi for another term as Speaker - and they view Jeffries as a potential establishment leader who could garner support from Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez's powerful 'squad' of progressives.
'He bridges moderates and progressives better than anyone. And most importantly, he's not Nancy Pelosi,' one Democratic lawmaker told The Hill of Jeffries. 'He's the only one prepared and positioned' to be Speaker.
Publicly, Jeffries has shot down any notion of seeking the top leadership role, remaining loyal to Pelosi and saying he is focused on retaining his current job.
The Speaker is chosen by a majority vote of the entire House, meaning that in theory, a handful of centrist Democrats could force the party's hand in the case of a slim majority by threatening to side with Republicans.
However, it's unclear whether Ocasio-Cortez's powerful faction would back Jeffries for Speaker, after she previously threatened to back a primary challenger against the fellow New York Democrat in the 2020 election.
All four members of Ocasio-Cortez's squad won re-election on Tuesday, and the faction added three new progressive allies in districts in Missouri and New York.
Pelosi was notably quiet on Wednesday regarding her party's shrinking margin in the House.
She didn't directly address her losses in a letter to her Democratic colleagues, aside from calling the election 'challenging.'
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez's powerful 'squad' of progressives expanded its influence, seeing three new allies elected to the House on Tuesday
Two centrist Democrats in the House say they are contacting colleagues to round up support for House Democratic Caucus Chairman Hakeem Jeffries for House Speaker
House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, a California Republican, said the erosion of the Democratic majority could threaten Pelosi's grip on the Speaker's chair.
'I know the vote on the floor is difficult for Speaker. I know there was a number of people who did not vote for her last time,' McCarthy said at a press conference Wednesday, alluding to Democratic defectors two years ago.
'And as our numbers continue to grow, I think at the end of the day, no matter where we end up, we'll be able to have a very big say, or even run the floor when it comes to policy,' McCarthy predicted.
After the 2018 election, Pelosi survived a challenge to her leadership of the caucus - but was on more solid footing with her party's control of the House than she will be in this cycle.