"Conservative" Democrats?

All over the "mainstream media," I'm seeing the notion that the Democrats only won the election by running a bunch of fairly conservative candidates. Conservative bloggers and commentators take this even further, arguing that the Democrats won because the Republicans were insufficiently conservative, and this election is therefore actually a mandate for more conservative policies.

Personally, I think that's wrong. All successful political parties are coalitions. At the moment, the Democrats have successfully assembled a center-left coalition--that is, they won with centrist candidates like Jim Webb and Jon Tester, and also won with very liberal candidates, like Sherrod Brown. The Republicans, who for a while had a coalition of religious fundamentalists, free-market and small-government libertarians, and people they'd scared the shit out of, have meanwhile seen their coalition break down, as the libertarians grew restless about the size and intrusiveness of the federal government and the scared people stopped being quite so scared and started thinking rationally about their own interests.

Even the centrists who won in this cycle are, by and large, rather populist, even liberal, on issues like the minimum wage and environmental protection--expect progress on both fronts. And, I think there is now a majority for getting us out of Iraq. The truth is, the majority of the country supports liberal policies on most issues, so liberal policies, by and large, are centrist.

That's why I think this Democratic coalition could hold up a while. I hope I'm right.