For the first time in a long time, Democrats have won an election. This is a nice change of pace from my past experiences with Daily Kos and other liberal blogs, wherein I was assured victory, but treated to abject defeat.
Now what to do? Well, I say do some nice, popular stuff.
What can't be denied here is that a lot of the result comes from people who are voting Democratic despite their usual inclinations because of the incredibly poor state of the national Republican Party and the Administration. Of course, there's no compelling reason to expect them to come back next time, so it'll be important, now that Democrats are in power, to do some things that show people that liberal is actually, you know, good.
You can't rely on "red meat" playing to the base type of stuff, as the Republicans have shown in this election. Sure, doing stuff that's popular with the base but unpopular amongst the general population is particularly satisfying for the base (which is why Republicans stuck with nonsense like the stem cell research ban), but if your base isn't nearly 30% of the population, you'll run into trouble for sure.
Oversight and some popular liberal-style policies, maybe with some veto overrides thrown in to draw out the contrast... that's the order of the day.