Flashbacks from 2016 put Democrats on notice – and on edge

Mo Elleithee remembers election night 2016 as if it were yesterday. The Democratic commentator was at Fox News headquarters in New York, watching the numbers come in and going on-air throughout the evening with other political analysts.

“We are all sitting there in the green room, in between hits, hovering around laptops and iPads, looking at returns,” says Mr. Elleithee, the former communications director at the Democratic National Committee (DNC). “There was a lot of confusion and surprise.”

Elleithee’s wife was also in New York – for Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton’s victory party. The election would wrap up by 11:30 or so, and then he would head over and they’d hit the party circuit together. At least that was the plan.

“She was sitting at the party, texting me as the mood was changing there, and I was texting her as the mood was changing over at Fox,” says Elleithee, director of the nonpartisan Institute of Politics and Public Service at Georgetown University since 2015. “People thought, the only way we lose is if the bottom falls out. Well, the bottom