The 2006 election results were a rebuke not just to President Bush and Congressional Republicans, but to radio talk-show hosts and other right-wing polarizers.

The right managed to win seven more anti-gay marriage referendums across the country, but it was repudiated on Iraq, immigration and excessive religiosity.

At the same time, while Democrats won control of the House and possibly the Senate, they did so by capturing the votes of moderates and independents, whom they could lose easily with demonstrations of wretched excess.

It’s encouraging that Bush and incoming Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., and likely Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., are talking the language of bipartisan cooperation, but Democrats will be strongly tempted to exercise their passions against the president and his policies.

Exit polls showed that, once again, self-identified moderates made up a near majority of the electorate – 47 percent – and this group split 62 percent to 36 percent Democratic – a 9-point Democratic gain from 2002 and 8 points above 2004.

Only 21 percent of voters identified themselves as liberals and 32 percent as conservatives. Liberals supported Democrats nearly 90 percent of the time, while conservatives voted Republican by less than 80 percent.

While Republican and Democratic candidates held their partisan base voters by margins above 90 percent, independents went Democratic by a margin of 58 percent to 38 percent, a 10-point gain over 2002 and 9 points over 2004.

Clearly, these elections were a classic “six-year itch” referendum on the incumbent president – and Bush lost.

The scale of this loss was on par with the post-war average for such elections: close to 30 House seats versus the average of 32, and likely six Senate seats compared to the average of eight.

In elections during which the president’s popularity was low because of war, scandal or recession, however, the average is 47 House seats and eight Senate seats.

Democrats did not campaign on a distinct positive agenda, but rather against Bush and the Iraq war and for an ill-defined “new direction.”

Bush, of course, failed to win a majority of the popular vote in 2000, yet he began governing as though he had won a smashing mandate. Largely because of his response to terrorism, he managed to defy history by increasing his party’s majorities in two subsequent elections.

But he has turned himself into one of the most polarizing presidents in American history. And history has at last caught up with him.

The loudest message from the elections is that the nation wants a change of policy in Iraq. By a margin of 57 percent to 41 percent, voters said they oppose the war.

By 59 percent to 34 percent, voters said the war has not improved American security, and by 56 percent to 37 percent, they called for withdrawal of some or all U.S. troops, as opposed to maintaining current levels or sending more.

Yet full withdrawal is a distinct minority position – 30 percent – and Democrats won’t have the country’s support if they force it. Encouragingly, they say they won’t.