One piece of conventional wisdom making the rounds in Washington is that Democrats rode to power on the backs of moderate and conservative Democrats. In pre-election interviews, I regularly pointed to the Democrats' selection of candidates in many of these contested races as an example of how good of a campaign they had run. Dick Morris presses this point in his column today:

But how did Democrats achieve these majorities? It did so lifted by the wings of moderate, centrist Democrats who mastered their GOP opponents throughout the country. It was not liberals who defeated Republican incumbents in the House and Senate. It was moderates, future members of the Democratic Leadership Council (DLC).

The only reason Pelosi is Speaker is that a fresh crop of moderate Democrats ousted Republican incumbents in the House.

Now that the election is over, however, I am wondering just how much of a difference these moderate Democratic candidates really made. I do think the Democrats' willingness to run relatively conservative candidates spoke to their discipline and commitment to winning and was important in setting the tone for how they conducted the entire campaign.

But looking at the conservative Democrats most prominently mentioned in the new Congress - outside of Jim Webb in Virginia where there is no question that Webb's conservatism was critical to his upset of George Allen - it is hard to find a specific race where it was the conservatism of the candidate that made the winning difference.

In Pennsylvania, for example, Bob Casey smashed Rick Santorum by an incredible 17 points. I suspect had Pennsylvania Democrats run almost any non-scandal tinged liberal they would have still won this race. Liberal Sherrod Brown's 12-point win in neighboring Ohio is a solid indication that the ideology of the Democratic challenger was not the driving force in this election. Brad Ellsworth's 22-point win in Indiana 8 is another example of where a more liberal candidate would likely have still won against John Hostettler, though probably with a margin more in line with the 4 and 8 point wins in IN-2 and IN-9.

Even in North Carolina 11 where Heath Shuler won by 8 points against the tainted Charles Taylor, I don't think it was Shuler's conservatism that was critical to his win. Shuler was not as strong a candidate locally as the national media assumed, and given the macro political winds and Taylor's problems I suspect a more liberal candidate would still have won this seat.

Finally, Jon Tester's win in Montana is often mistakenly cited as another example of where a conservative Democrat beat the Republican, except the race is actually proof of just the opposite. Tester - who is actually quite liberal - beat the more conservative Democrat John Morrison in the primary and held on to win the general by a squeaker.

The moderate or conservative bent of some Democratic candidates may have won the Democrats a couple of extra races they other wise would not have but it would be a mistake to suggest it was a critical factor in their big win. It was not. Obviously, the single seat in Virginia was significant in that it flipped control of the Senate, but of the 35 House and Senate seats Democrats picked up, the conservative bent of the Democratic challenger was not determinative in more than a few, at most. It is in 2008 where these more moderate and conservative members in the House will help Democrats as they try and hold on to their new majority.