If he has a minute, George W. Bush might want to put in a call to Ottawa and ask Stephen Harper for advice on managing a minority government. For with two years left on his presidential mandate, Bush now finds himself having to share the stage with a brazenly resurgent Democratic Congress.

To no one's real surprise, Democrats ran roughshod over their Republican opponents from Maine to Florida and throughout the Midwest, even taking three seats in reliably Republican Indiana. In all, Democrats won at least 28 new congressional seats, 13 more than they needed to regain the House of Representatives for the first time since 1994. The Senate, a tougher nut, quickly followed.

The deciding issue, as the U.S. networks pointed out continuously on election night, was the unpopularity of the president's war in Iraq and the Democrats' vague but effective promise to alter the course of that unpopular conflict.

But for those Democrats who were swept to power, vowing to change the face of Republican Washington, this was a huge psychological victory in its own right: For the first time in a dozen years, Democrats beat the vaunted Republican get-out-the-vote machine and injected what appears to be a new fluidity into U.S. politics.

According to election-night analysts studying the exit polls, suburban voters, married women, many Roman Catholics and other swing voters returned to the Democratic fold.

The party also looked to be surprisingly competitive in several rural seats that have been Republican for a long time. Though perhaps that could be attributed to conservative voters staying home, angry at the scandals involving lobbyists and sexual improprieties that have dogged certain Republicans in recent months.

Not to be overlooked, Tuesday's vote also left the Democrats with the governorship - and therefore the voting apparatus - in such key states as Pennsylvania and Ohio, states that played important roles in the election-night drama of the last two presidential elections.

And the Senate

After a day of recounting, the Democrats also came away with victory in the Senate, winning six new seats, the bare minimum they needed for a 51-49 majority. That majority came only after the Democrats won two exceedingly close and bitterly fought races in Montana and Virginia. It also includes Independent Senator Joe Lieberman of Connecticut, a former Democrat (and vice-presidential candidate) who was drummed out of the party six months ago for supporting Bush on Iraq.

After the vote, a vindicated Lieberman told reporters there was never any question he would join the Republicans and that he is anticipating being chairman of one of the senior congressional committees, likely homeland security.

Being able to control both houses of Congress will almost certainly help the Democrats with their strategy of trying to keep the president's feet to the fire, especially when it comes to Iraq and related issues.

Over the last six years of the Bush administration in particular, the house and Senate have acted as a kind of Republican firewall for the presidency, buttressing such controversial issues as the Bush tax cuts, the administration's handling of the Hurricane Katrina fallout and even the White House approach to the Muslim prisoners being held at the Guantanamo Bay detention centre.

The Democrats have made no secret of their intention to try to gain control over key house and Senate committees in order to probe more deeply into reconstruction contracts for Iraq and the entire handling of the war.

But the caveat here is unlike Canada, Washington is not a parliamentary system. The White House, the executive branch, still has pretty close to absolute control over foreign policy and a huge array of media-savvy techniques to get its way.

And just as important, from a political point of view, the Democratic "opposition" in Congress probably only has a small window in which to turn itself into a player. By next spring, next fall at the latest, the presidential primaries will be gearing up and the mighty glare of the U.S. media will be turned on those men and women seeking the most powerful political position in the Western world.

That said, the Democrats do seem poised to hit the ground running. House minority leader Nancy Pelosi, a congresswoman from the San Francisco area, is set to become the new Speaker and the highest-ranking elected woman in U.S. history.

What's more, she has a six-point plan to lay before Congress in its first week on the job in January that will see the introduction of a tough new anti-lobbying law (the antidote to the Republicans' Contract with America legislation that sparked their sweep to power in 1994) as well as proposals to raise the minimum wage, boost homeland security spending (including new border arrangements), introduce a variety of alternative fuel measures and reverse education cuts.

The full consequences of Tuesday's vote could take a while to sink in because it changed not only the raw numbers but the complexion of the U.S. Congress. Swept out were a bunch of moderate Republicans, including such liberals as Senator Lincoln Chafee of Rhode Island, as well as many of the strongman lawmakers from the heady class of '94.

Swept in, or seeing their fortunes rise by the swelling of their ranks, are a bunch of aggressive new potential committee chairmen as well as an uncertain mix of moderate new lawmakers and some unusually conservative ones.

That last group includes some Iraq and Vietnam-era war veterans who were elected as Democrats and whose take on the current situation in Iraq, and what to do about it, might be more nuanced than party bosses are prepared for.

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