There’s no joy for a sensible person in The Democrats picking up more than 35 seats IF neither party works with the other for the common good of the electorate. Those who govern have to do more than win elections. And every important piece of legislation even on Israel/Jewish issues (Jackson-Vanik, covert help for soviet, syrian and Ethiopian aliya, Iron Dome funding) happened because both parties worked together. The republicans didn’t play ball when they had both houses, and stymied themselves several times without the democrats help. Now the house is in democrat hands, I have no more confidence in them to avoid partisanship. They showed poor partisan judgement on how they handled the Kavanaugh evidence, and it blew up on them.
That being said, POTUS was simply wrong on the numbers when he claimed victory in the elections.
Fact: Democrats won control of seven governorships. The republicans gained one. 87 state legislatures held elections in 2018, and the Democratic Party gained control of at least 350 state seats and seven state chambers. Democrats gained unified control of seven state governments and broke unified Republican control of four state governments.
Fact: over 6 million more total votes for democrats than republicans in Federal races.
Fact: most seats picked up by democrats since the Nixon administration
Fact: about a 10% average shift to democratic candidates in ALL races, even those the republicans won. That is an incredible shift.
Fact: republicans got slaughtered in suburban electoral districts. democrats picked up at least 22 seats in this fastest growing element measured by population density. 121 million people live in suburban districts, and at least 83 million of them are now represented by democrats.
Fact: The republicans picked up one seat in the senate. NO ONE was predicting they were going to lose senate seats. Nat Silver, the noted statistician who tracked probabilities right up to the election, gave the Democrats only a 15% chance of increasing their Senate Tally. That is only 2% lower than the probability he calculated for the republicans to increase their house seats (17%) . So it is misleading to characterize accomplishing something you were 5 times more likely to accomplish than not as much of a victory.