Over 58 million Americans in 33 states voted in the Senatorial elections in 2006. Depending on how you count Bernie Sanders and Joe Leiberman's voters, the Democrats won either 55.7% or 56.3% and Republicans either won 44.3% or 43.7%.
If you put Sanders and Leiberman's voters in the Democratic column, our candidates won 32.7 million of the 58.1 million cast and the Republican candidates won 25.4 million.
If you count them separately, Independents took less than 1 million votes, Dems took 31.99 million votes and Repubs took 25.4 million.
Either way, talk about your mandates.
Voters in just 33 states elected a Democratic Senate in 2006 by a significantly larger margin than President Bush was re-elected by in 2004. In that election, Bush received 62,040,610 votes (morons), or 50.7% and Kerry received 59,028,111 votes, or 48.3%. Bush's margin of 2.4% supposedly gave him political capital, and he "intend(ed) to spend it!"
So how would Bush interpret the fact that the Democrats just kicked the Republicans in the ass, by a margin of 12%, or 7,287,724 votes. And that was with only 66% of the states voting.
Now is the time for the Democrats in the Senate to spearhead their agenda. The public will have high expectations, for change in Iraq, improvements in access to healthcare and education, and a reinstatement of the Clinton era taxes on the upper class. Timidity in ushering in changes will not win over a public hungry for change, and 2008 is closer than we think!