Rep. Steve Israel on Election Outcome: ‘It Was a Pretty Ugly Night’

"It wasn't a great night. In fact, it was a pretty ugly night to be blunt about it. There is no way around that. Look, I think that there is a seeding  anger by the middle class at Washington, and I think that both parties need to listen to that. I agree with Joe. This isn’t necessarily about Super PACs, it’s about the middle class's pocketbooks and it's about our ability to come together where we can, and I think we can come together on some key middle class economic security issues. And that’s what has to happen now that this election is mercifully behind us ...

I was surprised this ended up the way it was. I mean, 2006 was a wave election for Democrats and the Republicans lost 30 seats. 2010 was a wave election for Republicans. Democrats lost 63 seats. This was a wave election at every level. The only good news for us in the House is that we did contain the wave. I think we will end up topping out at about 15 seats. There are still some elections that haven’t been called. We were able win in some pretty tough Republican areas, like Joe’s state in Florida. It looks like we may win a race in a Republican district in Omaha, Nebraska, and maybe flip one in California. But the bottom line is that I did not believe that this was going to be a wave election more of a wave for senators and governors, less of a wave for us. But we still lost and we need to do better in 2016."