So now the stage is set for squabbling over who/what led to the Democrats victorious holding action last night. (And does their effective defense set the stage for a winning offense...?)

Dean taking credit by association. (He's still better than Terry McAuliffe)

The TNR argues that Kaine's win was done so through cultural conservativism (But then, what Democratic wins in the South, Midwest, and Rocky Mountain states aren't accomplished by appealing to social conservatism?)

The Kaine victory is really a rebuke to the Howard Dean model of running campaigns. It shows that a Democrat can triumph in a southern state by running a centrist campaign that blurs cultural differences. Of course, Kaine represented the incumbent party in a state race, and getting frothing mad wouldn't have done anyone any good. Perhaps, even Dean would have taken Kaine's tact. But the neatest trick of the race was the way in which Kaine leveraged his Catholicism so effectively in such a Protestant state. Unlike John Kerry, he sounded authentic when invoking his faith to oppose the death penalty. That's because he also opposes abortion, and, therefore, doesn't sound like a cafeteria Catholic. And he could effectively and credibly explain his activism as flowing from his belief in the social gospel and missionary work. As I have argued before, Republicans have had a field day borrowing rhetoric from Catholicism. Democrats should do the same.

Village Voice says Kaine's win bodes well for a resurgent DLC.

Bruce Reed chimes in with my favorite Dem analysis:

The real question is which party will take yesterday's lessons to heart. The GOP should see that moderate Republicans can win overwhelmingly in the bluest of blue places like New York City, while Republicans who fail to deliver the moderation they promised--like Arnold Schwarzenegger--get pounded outside the safe confines of red states.

Yet the spin from conservative circles draws just the opposite lesson: that Republicans lost Virginia and New Jersey because the base is demoralized and hasn't been pandered to enough. When Mark Warner's approval is at 80 percent and Bush's is under 40 percent, the party isn't letting down the base-it's letting down the whole country. John Dickerson and George Bush may not be willing to fire Karl Rove, but the American people are.

Democrats are already hearing plenty of bad advice, too. ABC's usually reliable The Note offers misinformation that could have come from Bob Shrum-or Karl Rove: "Democrats can now (again) plausibly argue that they can win by advocating bigger government programs for things such as health care and education." Virginia teaches a different lesson, which Democrats learned well in the 1990s: If we start by balancing the books, not by advocating bigger government, voters will trust us to solve problems like health care and education.