The Thailand expat forum for Travel, Lifestyle and Fun.

Little Chuchok

5.15pm Wednesday November 8, 2006


WASHINGTON - Democrats swept Republicans out of power in the US House of Representatives today riding public doubts about the war in Iraq and President George W Bush's leadership to victory.

Two years after a decisive election victory for Bush and his Republicans, Democrats picked up the 15 seats they needed to recapture control of the 435-seat House for the first time since 1994, both CNN and NBC television said at 5.12pm NZT.

Democrats needed to gain six seats to reclaim control of the 100-seat Senate for the first time in four years, and so far had taken three seats from Republicans.

Polls heading into the voting showed Democrats benefiting from public doubts about the country's future, the Iraq war and Bush, whose approval ratings in the mid-30s limited his ability to reach out to independents and drum up support for Republicans.

All House seats, 33 Senate seats and 36 governorships were at stake on Tuesday.

A Democratic majority in even one chamber of Congress could slam the brakes on Bush's legislative agenda in the two years he has left in office and give Democrats a chance to investigate his administration's most controversial policy decisions such as the war in Iraq.

Democrats have promised votes on much of their agenda within the first 100 hours of taking power in January, including new ethics rules, a rise in the minimum wage, reduced subsidies to the oil industry and improvements in border and port security.

Both parties had fired up intensive get-out-the-vote operations to bring core supporters to the polls and sent big-name stars on to the campaign trail in a late effort to win over independents and tip the balance in close races around the country.

About 50 contested House races and 10 Senate races were the chief battlegrounds.

Before the voting, independent analysts predicted Democrats could gain 20 to 40 House seats, while polls showed races for key Republican-held seats in Missouri, Virginia, Tennessee, Montana and Rhode Island were too close to call.

By 5pm NZT Democrats had scored key early victories over President George W Bush's Republicans.

Democratic Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton, widely believed to be weighing a bid for the White House, won re-election to a second term in the US Senate.

Her second Senate term in hand, Clinton now faces widespread speculation that she will pursue higher political office.

Democrats also picked up three Republican Senate seats, in Pennsylvania, Rhode Island and Ohio, and held their own threatened Senate seats in New Jersey and Maryland. But Republicans led tight races in Tennessee and Virginia that were crucial to Democratic hopes of winning the Senate.

"Certainly the early indications look good but I think we're all prepared to stay up all night and watch to make sure," Democratic Party chief Howard Dean said on CNN.

Before voting closed, opinion polls showed Democrats favoured to recapture control of the US House of Representatives from Republicans for the first time since 1994.

"I'm here to thank each and every one of you for bringing us to where we are now tonight -- on the brink of a great Democratic victory," House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi, who would become speaker if Democrats are confirmed as taking the House, told a victory party on Capitol Hill.

New York elected Democratic Attorney General Eliot Spitzer to replace departing Republican Gov George Pataki, according to media projections. Spitzer's victory restores the governor's seat to Democratic hands for the first time in a decade.

In Ohio, decisive in the 2004 White House race, Ted Strickland, six-term congressman and Methodist minister, was projected as the first Democrat in 16 years to be elected governor.

Massachusetts, one of the most faithfully Democratic states in presidential elections, returned the governor's job to the party also for the first time in 16 years by electing Deval Patrick as its first black governor and only the second black governor ever from any state.

The stakes are high because control of the highest elected office in each state sets the agenda for policymaking at the state level and provides political leverage, money and influence to the candidate or their party in presidential election years.

In a campaign dominated by Iraq, Bush defended his handling of the war to the end, despite job approval ratings mired in the mid-30s and growing public discontent. He questioned what Democrats would do differently and predicted Republicans would retain control of Congress.

After a five-day swing through 10 states to fire up supporters in Republican strongholds, Bush voted near his ranch in Crawford, Texas, and urged all Americans to vote.

ChiangMai noon

moved to boring us domestic issues.
bloody hell LC, try to keep up with our sub forums.

Little Chuchok

I'm sorry, I don't cheer for the English.

Butterfly

Time to put back the Chimp in his cage, the show is over.

man with no head

Finished. Stick a fork in Bush.

There's light at the end of the tunnel perhaps after the train wreck of the past 6 years.

Mr Earl

It's not over. The senate looks like a turnover as well.
Get ready to hear much more from Nancy Pelosi and Harry Ried, hourah!

man with no head

This is a chance to clean out the garbage from the GOP and get some decent people back. The ones in charge were getting too corrupt and drunk on the nectar of power.

cali kid

Mr Earl

Perhaps, but you should note that the majority of dems who won are very moderate and are more in line with Bush than Meatheads like Pelosi, Leahy, Reid, Schummer, and Waxman.

The Republicans deserved to lose but the dems deserved to win even less.
They won basically on Bash Bush platform. It will be curious to see how far they can ride that mule.

Camel Toe

Will we yank members start to see a more vigorous greening by the Brits now that sepo has lost a tinge of its stench?









<<<< here

Mr Earl

unlikely as we are still seeing the same articulate "bush is a chimp" posts.

man with no head

I think what you saw also is a large number of people who went for the GOP years ago (because they felt the Dems were too leftist) switch back because they saw the opposite happening to the Repubs. It's no longer a question of getting the Ds our or the Rs but which party is going to capture enough of those who are D/R to win the election?

Like me, for example. Dissatisfied Republican. If this were the Congress of 1994 I would have supported them with no problem. The past Congress, merely a rubberstamp for Bush, had to go.

You can't govern if you aren't moderate and even Bill Clinton realized this in 1994 when he did a 180 and effectively abandoned the liberal platform. This is a big reason why the stock market and the economy grew in the 1994-2000time frame. Bush would have never gotten away with much of what he's done if the Congress were D the whole time. It should be interesting to see what happens now.

If the economy were a bed of roses as SK has been trying to convince us for months now then why did the stewards of the best economy on earth lose big time? Because it's a fake economy. The people who matter most and vote aren't better off than they were years ago. Couple that with a pathetic war and it's no wonder the Dems took the House in a landslide. It bothers me to even remotely cheer for a party which I don't care for, but, it bothers me more to support my party when it's failing to live up to what it once stood for: fiscal and social conservative policies.

The Senate, on the other hand, looks like it may go the way I predicted: a split.

I predict the next two years the House is going to spend most of the time investigating the excesses of the past 6 years. Little else will get accomplished.

friscofrankie

Not sure this a such a major upset in the way things are going like someone said:
What does give one hope for the future of eh US is that it is a sweeping vote of no-confidence for the current administration and is a sign that the Citizens of the USA are no longer going to be scared into allowing the abuses of power that have been going on.

Hopefully the incumbents and newly elected officials will recognize this and act accordingly...
if they can rectify the abuses then I would say that wasa great deal to accomplish. Yeah some other important things may get set back a few years, and this may even be laid at the feet of those correcting so much abuse, but it is work that must be done.

__________________
For art to exist, for any sort of aesthetic activity to exist, a certain physiological precondition is indispensable: intoxication.

insanity...

To view links or images in signatures your post count must be 10 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.

Mr Earl

I don't think so. The dems will get both senate and house.
That's a mandate of sorts. See my thread I just started in the other sub forum.

man with no head

I don't know that many of the Democrats will necessarily side with Bush in the way they did during Reagan's time. They may be moderate but will they so easily vote with the other side when there's an election in two years? There's no reason to.

raycarey

soon ol' earl will be saying iraq was a mistake, that he's a st. louis cardinals fan, and he knew all along who was going to win on 'survivor'.

Camel Toe

Winning in the House is a far more substantial sign that there is a swing than whatever the results in the Senate be. Even governorships count more in this regard than the Senate imo.

man with no head

Well also consider the genius of having 1/3 of the Senate elected every 2 years: this is a hindrance generally to one party making a massive sweep in power during each election.

Since all laws originate in the House a change in the leadership of the House tends to be almost as important as changing the occupant at 1600 Penn. Ave.

A majority of governors of one party or the other tend to have little overall influence nationally.

Mr Earl