I played twenty questions with a liberal friend of mine before the election to try to get him to admit to any form of bias. His idea of the middle was Al Gore. Milbank isn't fooling anyone.
Thats really not that odd, if you listen to the media carefully, they think the democrats are the mainstream, the voters are right of center, and the republicans are radical right.
This same view point applies to most elitists, especially acadamia, which thinks democrats are moderates, and they themselves are left of center but that most voters are outside the middle and (this is funny) out of the mainstream.
I had a professor in college who used to argue how the majority of America was actually out of touch with the mainstream. The idea that the majority is the mainstream, was foreign to this guy, and many other liberals.