On Tuesday, Democrats picked up 28 seats, control of the House and -- pending a looming battle over a skin-tight Senate race in Virginia -- the upper hand in the upper chamber, too.
The Republican response was immediate. President Bush called a news conference to announce that Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld was stepping down. The president also stepped away from fiery campaign rhetoric and reached out to the likely new Speaker of the House, Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-CA).
To New York Times columnist David Brooks, the events of the past 48 hours were the hallmark of "an aroused center" looking not for radical political change, but merely for a "competent" government.
"Forty-seven percent of the people who voted on Tuesdasy were self-declared moderates, and they voted for the Democrats in a landslide majority," Brooks noted. "They threw out a lot of moderate Republicans and they embraced a lot of conservative Democrats."
E.J. Dionne of The Washington Post compared the political climate to 1974, when post-Watergate sentiment swept Republicans out of Congress... but not necessarily in favor of liberals.
"What you had eventually was Jimmy Carter, who ran in 1976 as a fiscal conservative with some liberal policies, but who had the endorsement of Pat Robertson," Dionne recalled. "He ran as a conservative anti-politics reformist who was in favor of fiscal discipline."
But the way forward may be perplexing for Democrats.
"After such a bitter election it's not easy," Dionne said. "Democrats have an interest in getting some things done and in a way putting Bush and the Republicans on the spot by passing relatively popular things -- notably the minimum wage increase -- and saying 'This is where we want to lead the country.'"
As to a new sense of bipartisanship, Dionne is skeptical, saying Democrats might be reminded of President Reagan's use of an old Russian proverb in his dealings with Soviet leaders: "Trust, but verify."
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