Recently I've been focusing on who's going to run in '08. However, the '06 midterm elections are coming up much quicker and deserve some attention. I have heard constantly about gaining a Democratic majority, but I wasn't quite sure how close we were, so I did some homework.

SENATE:
(from Wikipedia: 2006 midterm elections) The Senate is currently composed of 55 Republicans, who have been in the majority since 2003, 44 Democrats, and 1 liberal Independent (former Republican Jim Jeffords of Vermont). Jeffords is retiring and his seat is one of the 33 seats being contested, while another 17 are held by Democrats and 15 are held by Republicans.

To control 51 seats, a majority in the Senate, Democrats would need either a net gain of 6 seats (if independent candidate Bernie Sanders wins Jim Jeffords' seat in Vermont and continues to caucus with the Democrats as he does in the House), or a net gain of 7 seats (if Sanders loses to a Republican). Republicans need to hold only 50 seats after the election to have a majority because the Vice President (currently Republican Dick Cheney) breaks all tie votes in his role as President of the Senate.


Senate Seats up for election:
red - Republican incumbent
pink - Retiring Republican
blue - Democratic incumbent
light blue - Retiring Democrat
yellow - Retiring Independent
grey - States without a seat up for reelection

HOUSE:
from Wikipedia: 2006 midterm elections
All of the 435 seats in the House up are up for election.
The House is currently composed of 231 Republicans, 201 Democrats and 1 Independent (who caucuses with the Democrats).

Republicans hold a 30 seat advantage, so Democrats would need to pick up 16 seats to take control of the House, which has had a Republican majority since 1995. (This is a complete list of everyone running for election in the House.)

There are currently 30 open seats"28 incumbents who will not be seeking re-election plus 2 vacancies, both of which will be filled before the general election. Of the 28 open seats, 19 are held by Republicans, 8 are held by Democrats and 1 is held by an independent. One of the vacant seats which will be filled before the general election was held by a Republican and the other was held by a Democrat.

Here are some stats from the Washington Post on the House and Senate elections. The graphic won't post here, but it is very good, I'd definately recommend taking a look.

So, we're pretty close in the senate. The house, we still have a ways to go. Hopefully we can win both houses and start calling for reforms. However, Howard Dean has insisted, "I don't think that the first thing on our agenda is gonna be to get in a big partisan fight about whether the President should be impeached or not." Democratic House Leader Nancy Pelosi's spokesperson put it more bluntly, "Impeachment is off the table; she is not interested in pursuing it."

Hopefully they were just saying this. I would love to see a Democratic majority regardless, just to get the Republicans out of power. As America benefitted when Nixon was impeached so too would it benefit if Bush were impeached also