Democrats regroup as they grapple with Trump's victory

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Democrats regroup as they grapple with Trump's victory

The party is in disarray after the Republicans swept Congress and the White House; Doug McKelway has the story for 'Special Report'

If the tears and hanging heads at Clinton headquarters Tuesday night didn't tell the story, a conference call among House Democrats the following day did.

Sources tell Fox News the call was akin to "a group therapy session." There were also rumblings of dissent. "If we don't stick together we're going to kill each other," one said. And there also was talk of "restlessness in the troops."

"The Democratic Party's got to do a fair bit of soul searching and rejuvenation now," said Austan Goolsbee, the former chairman of President Obama's Council of Economic Advisors. "This may be the end of that generation of leadership and they've got to start taking new approaches, they're gonna have to start finding new people," he told Fox News.

Democrats had  projected that a pick-up of 12 seats or fewer in the House would be a bad night. They picked up only six and only two others in the Senate.

New York Democrat Chuck Schumer will take the helm as the new Senate Minority Leader, but in the House, Nancy Pelosi is likely to continue holding the reins. Any talk of her political demise is seen as premature, said her former communications director, Brendan Daly. "She's very good at keeping the caucus unified and that's not an easy thing to do because there's a lot of different points of view," he said.

Daly also noted Pelosi as Minority Leader was indispensable to Speaker Paul Ryan in bringing Republican-sponsored legislation over the top on some occasions when the  restless right wing of the House GOP, The Freedom Caucus, refused to budge.

Daly also touted the 75-year-old Pelosi's impressive  and tireless fundraising skills. She  helped pull in over $127 million in this election cycle for House races, while visiting 324  fundraisers in 50 cities.

As the dust settles over the Democrats' stunning defeat, there is also a growing realization that no House Leader could have stopped Trump and his coattail effect.

"So goes the top of the ticket, so goes the House races, said Kelly Ward, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee's Executive Director. "I think that's a reality that we all need to just accept and understand," she said.