Democrats, basking in success after recapturing the House of Representatives, said on Wednesday they would waste no time rolling up their sleeves and pressing forward with a new legislative program.
"We're going to move on the agenda that we laid out, the new direction agenda," said Rahm Emanuel the chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, tasked with working for the election of as many House Democrats as possible.
"We're going to march through our agenda to get this country moving again," he vowed.
House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, who us expected to make history as the first female Speaker of the House of Representatives was effusive speaking at a press conference about her party's success and the popular mandate for change. "The American people spoke with their votes, and they spoke for change and they spoke in support of a new direction for all Americans," said Pelosi, who hailed "the beauty and the genius of our democracy."
She said the US electorate called in the election for a change in tone and policy, especially in US policy in Iraq, which fuelled much of the dissatisfaction that led to Tuesday's crushing Republican losses.
"I think there has to be a signal of change of direction on the part of the president," the House minority leader said shortly before Bush was to hold a major post-election news conference.
"The one good place that he could start is a place where not only the democrats in large numbers of the American people, but the voices of the military have spoken out. That is to change the leadership at the Pentagon," Pelosi said.
Emanuel, who now looks likely to claim an even more senior leadership post in the new Democrat-led House, told CNN television said there was a long list of reforms that Democrats were set to tackle.
"We're going to go for a vote on increasing the minimum wage, a vote on direct negotiations for lower prescription drug prices, a vote on the 911 Commission recommendations, a vote to redirect the 12.5 billion dollars in subsidies to big oil companies toward energy independence," said Emanuel, who has widely been credited with engineering Democrats' successful election strategy in the House.
He also promised the Democrats would hold a vote on reducing rates on loans
to college students and would work to reducing the yawning US budget deficit, and promised votes on stem cell research, as well as "a new ethics package to clean up Washington."
Emanuel called Iraq, which fuelled much of the voter discontent, "the worst national security challenge in over two generations to this country."
Republicans meanwhile continued to cling to dwindling hope that they might be able to eke out a victory in the US Senate on Wednesday, although that prospect seemed increasingly slim after projections that Democratic challenger Jon Tester had narrowly won the Montana US Senate seat.
That leaves just Virginia as the only Senate seat where the outcome of the election was still uncertain, but Republican odds there were considered long, with the Democratic challenger Jim Webb leading incumbent Senator George Allen by several thousand votes in the ballot count.