Heath Shuler, for example, the former professional football player and newly elected Democrat from North Carolina, is anti-abortion and pro-gun, but sounds like an old-style Democrat on economic issues.

“I was taught at a very, very young age about faith and personal responsibility, and through that, that responsibility was about helping those who cannot help themselves,” Mr. Shuler said. “If you look at what the Democratic Party stands for, it is about helping others who can’t help themselves.”

Like other Democrats, he supports legislation to increase the minimum wage and make college tuition tax deductible. He also opposes trade agreements that he says have led to a 78 percent loss in textile industry jobs in his state.

Similarly, Ms. Boyda of Kansas, a first-time office holder who relied on lengthy newspaper inserts to make her case to the voters, said, “The rural economy has been left out.” She added: “A lot of my district feels a great deal of insecurity about their jobs, their health care, their business, their family farm. They feel like they’re just kind of hanging out there.”

Carol Shea-Porter, a social worker and new House member from New Hampshire who considers herself a populist, said, “The theme of my campaign was, I’m running for the rest of us.” She added that no matter how much the Bush administration boasted of job growth, her voters “understood those were Wal-Mart jobs.” And, she said, “They understood when they talked about the stock market boom, that half of Americans aren’t even in the stock market.”

Jim Webb, who defeated Senator George Allen of Virginia, campaigned heavily on the idea that the middle class was increasingly at risk in an age of growing inequality. Bob Casey, who overwhelmingly defeated Senator Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania, said he looked forward to “a really intensive focus on health care that I hope to be a part of.”

But it gets better:

That economic populism extends, for many candidates, to a new emphasis on expanding health coverage. Congressional Democrats who lived through the Clinton administration’s failed effort to create a national health insurance plan, which many believe was a crucial factor in the Democrats’ losses in 1994, have been wary of broad health legislation for years. (And being in the minority, they were unable to do much about it, regardless.) But the class of ’06 is adamant that something major can, and will, be done.

Dave Loebsack, a political science professor in Iowa who unseated the veteran Republican moderate, Representative Jim Leach, said he intended to sign on to proposed legislation to create a single-payer, national health insurance program “as one of the first things I will do when I get to Congress.”

“I have no idea where it’s going to go next year,” Mr. Loebsack said, “but at least we can give it a fair hearing.”

Steven Kagen, an allergist who won a Wisconsin district that has been represented by a Republican for much of the past 30 years, campaigned on a “No Patient Left Behind” plan. Mr. Kagen won despite doubters who called it “the Hillary hot potato,” a reference to the first lady turned New York senator who was the architect of the Clinton plan.

“This issue has blurred the lines between the two parties,” he said. “You don’t have to be a Republican or a Democrat to be ill, and to understand that the health care system doesn’t work.”

Mr. Kagen is one of several new members urging a renewed commitment to the more than eight million uninsured children in the United States, an issue that will move to the forefront when the State Children’s Health Insurance Program comes up for renewal next year.

Most of these new Democrats said they were also committed to changes in the new Medicare prescription drug program; in fact, giving the government the power to negotiate prices with drug companies is one of the first items of business in the Democrats’ “Six for ’06 Agenda.” (The agenda also includes an increase in the minimum wage and expansion of embryonic stem cell research.)

. . . Representative Sherrod Brown, who is moving to the Senate from the House after beating Senator Mike DeWine of Ohio, argued: “Tell me a whole lot of Republicans won’t work with us on finding a way for middle-class kids to get a college education, to vote for embryonic stem cell research, to raise the minimum wage. John McCain is already out there talking about prescription drug issues.”

Oh these conservative Democrats! Boy the Republicans won the battle of ideas all right. I love it.