On Wednesday, the NY State Senate will convene with a 32-30 majority. Numerous explanations have been given and plenty of people have been blamed for this change but one possible reason has not been discussed.

I think if it wasn’t for the new voting machines, the Senate would be in a 31-31 tie.

Justin Elliot at Salon.com has become (I think) just the 2^nd person in the “big leagues”, joining Ben Smith at Politico.com to notice what I has first pointed out in September –

THE MOSQUE STORY IS NO LONGER CONSIDERED NEWS

http://www.salon.com/news/politics/war_room/2010/12/31/park_51_a_look_back/index.html

Karl Rove apparently thinks President Obama will be re-elected or that a Republican President will keep Hillary Clinton on as Secretary of State.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/12/23/karl-rove-hillary-clinton-2016_n_800770.html

At the start of every election season in New York, there is much talk among pols and the press about which major Party candidates the minor Parties (Independence, Conservative, Working Families this year, with the Greens joining the fun next year) will cross-endorse in the various contests throughout the state.

On September 21, I asserted that the cynics who said so-called Ground Zero mosque was a classic summer story were correct and I predicted that the media would no longer act as though this is major issue that will resonate with voters in November and affect American relationships around the world.

http://www.r8ny.com/blog/jerry_skurnik/hello_fall_goodbye_mosque_news.html

Was I right?

I say yes!

The Wall Street Journal has a column on the vote counting in the election for California Attorney General.

Columnist John Fund writes:

The race to determine who will be the attorney general of California is still too close to call. Democrat Kamala Harris, San Francisco's district attorney, leads Republican Steve Cooley, the DA for Los Angeles County, by 31,000 votes out of nearly nine million cast. And there are more than 750,000 ballots left to count.

Even before Election Day, when it became clear that this was going to be a good year for Republicans, pundits & pols began debating what caused the turnaround from 2008.

Yesterday I suggested that we pay little or no attention to the spin from all sides regarding who will win too close to call election results. While writing about it, I was reminded about two other examples of worthless speculation that people in New York politics engage in – one happened last week and the other will happen shortly.

As each side tries to explain why their side is absolutely certain to win the still undecided Congressional & State Senate elections in New York, I’d like to reprint what I wrote previously about this type of speculation –

http://www.r8ny.com/blog/jerry_skurnik/20th_cd_results_wait.html

Frank Rich in Sunday’s NY Times writes one of those pithy comments that make no sense if anyone thinks about it for more than a minute.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/07/opinion/07rich.html?emc=eta1

You can’t win an election without a coherent message. Obama, despite his administration’s genuine achievements, didn’t have one. The good news — for him, if not necessarily a straitened country — is that the G.O.P. doesn’t have one either

Mickey Carroll of Quinnipiac and I are in Thursday’s NY Post writing about why New York resisted the Republican wave.

http://www.nypost.com/p/news/opinion/opedcolumnists/unions_made_the_ny_difference_fXoANAW05YY9wnyY2B8RuJ

http://www.nypost.com/p/news/opinion/opedcolumnists/staying_dry_in_gop_flood_NKIL0jcTgWFlARbzWHZl1I

But this is not the first time this happened.

David Brooks, in the Election Day edition of the Times attempts to reassure his liberal readers that they really don’t have to worry that a Republican Congress will be as conservative as they fear.

One reason the Brooks points to is –

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/02/opinion/02brooks.html?_r=1&ref=opinion

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-10-29/poll-shows-americans-don-t-know-economy-expanded-with-tax-cuts.html

As part of the US Justice Department’s indictment of Former Councilman & State Senator Hiram Monserrate, it is alleged that Monserrate had LIBRE; the non-profit the feds allege Monserrate controlled spend @$31,000 on a voter registration as part of his 2006 Primary campaign for State Senate.