Bush Says Rumsfeld Resigning, Gates to Replace Him

[Nephythys]

Hardly-

As Roll Call put it back when Clinton was president: "Simply put, the party controlling the White House nearly always loses House seats in midterm elections" — especially in the sixth year.

In Franklin D. Roosevelt's sixth year in 1938, Democrats lost 71 seats in the House and six in the Senate.

In Dwight Eisenhower's sixth year in 1958, Republicans lost 47 House seats, 13 in the Senate.

In John F. Kennedy/Lyndon Johnson's sixth year, Democrats lost 47 seats in the House and three in the Senate.

In Richard Nixon/Gerald Ford's sixth year in office in 1974, Republicans lost 43 House seats and three Senate seats.

Even America's greatest president, Ronald Reagan, lost five House seats and eight Senate seats in his sixth year in office.

But in the middle of what the media tell us is a massively unpopular war, the Democrats picked up about 30 House seats and five to six Senate seats in a sixth-year election, with lots of seats still too close to call.

Hardly a mandate.

YOU want to call it a mandate- does not make it so.

On top of that the mistake would be with his own base-not the left. I have already seen anger at the resignation of Rumsfeld. Some feel that Bush lied to them- and is a traitor to the right. If he had bailed on Bolton without even trying it would have been worse.