Digby's right that the conservative consensus has dominated our thought and discourse, on economic issues (broadly defined) at least, for quite some time. And, yes, moving forward the Democrats need to break the political model where your job is to deliver tax cuts.
On social issues, while in some ways we've actually made a lot of progress, it's probably the case that the conservative consensus has dominated. We're told it's okay to support abortion rights as long as we feel sufficiently guilty about it, and that on same-sex marriage the values of conservative religious voters should trump ours because, well, they're religious. Backlash politics has trumped identity politics. In spite of this voters in South Dakota just decided that they wanted abortion to remain legal and people can now get their gay marriage on, or a close equivalent, in various states.
