How many seats would the Democrats need to win to claim a mandate?

Obviously, if they win the House by one or two seats and the Repubs maintain control in the Senate, they can make no such claims. However, if the Democrats exceed the expectations of all the political prognosticators and win perhaps 50 seats, would that then be called a "mandate"? Or do mandates only happen in presidential elections? What happens if the Democrats win the House by a large margin and also win the Senate? Could they claim that the people have given them a mandate for change and they want a change of direction now - not 2008?

the Dems only need to pick up a couple of seats. We would still be a powerless minority, but if we get 50.0000001% of the votes, that's a mandate!

Seriously, I think the more we can get the better, but I'll settle for a 1-seat majority in both chambers. As long as we get to pick the leaders and set the agenda and determine what gets debated and what gets tabled, then we can get down to business; calling it a mandate or not won't really matter.

Then we will ramrod legislation through Congress as if we have 2/3rds majority in both houses of Congress.

This is the Bush standard. This is the low standard we have to meet. Payback could be a bitch for being so divisive.

:sarcasm:

Then, we can spend our political capital doing things like raising the minimum wage, changing the medicare prescription drug plan to allow the gov't to negotiate, etc.

message. Winning the Senate regardless of the outcome of the Lieberman/Lamont race would be a mandate.

(my wife suggests ousting/gaking all gop, i think that's a bit harsh:) )

1. Minimum wage increase
2. hard line against companies trying to stiff employees out of OT (8 day 40 week)
3. Medical insurance for everyone, single payer mandatory! If you want you may buy additional private insurance, hat's fine, but everyone has the human right to see a doctor as long as medical science is advanced as it it, it's a crime not to!
4. HARD line on trade. tariff's op the ASS until China revalues it's currency to it's actual value, then still tariff the fuck out of them. Encourage manufacturing jobs to RETURN to the US!
5. Tax the ever living FUCK out of corporations that have denied the US it's fair share of it's profits! Make the IRS greedy corporations' nightmare! Change the laws, any company owning even ONE office in the US MUST pay taxes!
6. Annex the camen <sp> islands the the above reason ;)
7. Education. 1000% increase in education
8. pull out ALL troops from ALL war zones, concentrate on Afghanistan ONLY!
After we rebuild Afghanistan properly , we annex it as a state
9. SHIP BUSH AND CO TO THE HAGUE, SEIZE ALL ASSETS!
10. Have the gambling industry figure out an open source way to electrify voting. In the mean time eliminate Diebold, seize ALL assets of Diebold, founders, and major shareholders! Toss the lot into jail!
11. pray we can undo some of this god awful damage before it's too late.

Looking through history, countries only get "one bite at the apple" when it comes to work power. They get to have it for a while, and when it's gone, that country is totally ruined. Rome, Persia, Spain, France, England, Holland (who settled for owning it, according to my in laws), Japan, Germany. One biters. Their countries were destroyed (the UK has lost all it's colonies and has been in recession since reganomics destroyed it in the 80s), germany was destroyed by both world wars, france, well.. that's france for you.
Spain - every land it touched rotted and became a shadow of it's self. Spain is now a rot-land (as they say here in holland) and it just... garbage.
Japan was utterly crushed by the US and was rebuilt (properly) by MacAurther, they had major power in the 80's but pissed it away because they became greedy and massive loan frauds (again, Regans and bushes anyone). Their banking system is a total joke and one major reason why they are STILL in a recession.

China is the next country to take a bite... and if they succeed we are ALL so incredibly FUCKED!

But that's just my opinion... I could be wrong
-A patriot in exile