The American Prospect Magazine

With 100% of precincts reporting, unofficial results have Andrea Stewart-Cousins beating incumbent Westchester state Senator Nick Spano: 41,369 to 39,224.

Kos sums up the conflicted attitude some Democrats and liberals are having today.

The American Prospect is overjoyed with this year and sees better days on the horizon.

"If the Democrats handle the next two years well, they could have 56 or more seats in the Senate when the next president takes office."

RudyBlogger thinks Giuliani may announce his presidential plans around January, and has one distinct advantage over John McCain now. Giuliani doesn't have to serve in a polarized senate for two years.

Then again, Ben notes that according to National Journal, Giuliani backed 26 losing candidates yesterday.

Potamac Flacks has a list of Democratic press people who found themselves working for committee chairman and congressional leaders today.

Early and Often says that last night, "Hillary made herself the show. The optimistically yellow suit didn't hurt, nor did the concise speech."

John Hall's music may be outdated, but his successful bid "may epitomize the 21st Century techno-savvy political campaign," says Liz Benjamin.

Chris Callaghan loses the tie and speaks from the heart.

Jerry Skurnik says the elections were good for the Jews and Buddhists.

El Diario is looking for Latino candidates.

And pictured above is my pass from last night.  read more »

-- Azi Paybarah

The American Prospect quotes a foreign banker with U.S. clients who said tickets to the former president's 60th birthday party in Toronto this weekend were sold with the possible future president in mind.

"Senator Clinton has no connection to her husband's philanthropic operation. "But the message was pretty clear," says an executive with a foreign-owned bank that does not operate in the U.S., but has clients in America. "If we wanted some access to Senator Clinton, the foundation would be a good way to facilitate some access for our issues."

-- Azi Paybarah

The American Prospect—Greg Sargent—has a good item on the bogusness of those horrifying reports that Jews and other religious minorities in Iran would have to wear colored badges identifying them as infidels. One of the original reports on this canard, by Amir Taheri, has now been amended on the site of Benador Associates. Turns out there is no law requiring a dress code for infidels.

Will Chuck Schumer, never one to miss an opportunity to stoke anger toward Iran, retract this statement to the Washington Times:

Sen. Charles E. Schumer, New York Democrat, said the legislation proved that Iran's Islamic regime "does not belong among civilized governments."

The false story, put forward as a casus belli, is now the talk of leftwing sites, with reason. Benador is an important site for the neocon cabal. It is a speakers' bureau that represents Richard Perle, Laurie Mylroie, Walid Phares, James Woolsey, Meyrav Wurmser, Victor Davis Hanson, Charles Krauthammer and others. It seems to have cleansed its members' list of Judith Miller, a former member. When will we be free of this bunch?

On The American Prospect's blog, Tapped, my predecessor Greg Sargent (now writing regularly over there) has Chris Lehane doing some long-range predictions about possible Clinton 2008 matchups. (Yes, today is Hillary day.)  read more »

The analysis pieces are starting to meander in, and a couple you may have missed are Fred Siegel's harsh treatment of Freddy in The New Republic and Greg Sargent's partial lament of the result in The American Prospect.

Siegel sees a certain amount of justice in the defeat of a man whom, he thinks, cost the city's Democratic Party a shot at reform under a New-Democratized Mark Green.  read more »

"And so for the second time in four years, New York has elected a mediocre mayor," Siegel writes. "And for the second time in four years, Fernando Ferrer is to blame."

Sargent, meanwhile, thinks that Bloomberg's victory was in part over Giuliani and Koch, and laments what he sees as the failure of the city's elites to call Mike on his spending and to give Freddy a chance.

Slate's Fred Kaplan has a pointed response to Greg Sargent's recent plea for New York Democrats to vote against Mike, an article Kaplan sees as essentially a symptom of the Democrats' problems.

"The lament misses the point. The VIPs' real concern is that they don't want the party to be associated with the hacks and second-raters who are somehow running the local branch. The real puzzler is why the city's Democratic establishment doesn't take the task of governing more seriously.... This is what most New Yorkers -- most voters -- want in a modern mayor: a competent manager who protects the city's people and treats them fairly. The problem with the Democrats' mayoral candidates in recent years is that they don't exude this air of basic competence."

Certainly, Kaplan's right that more people are going to vote on his theory than on concerns about national partisan realignments.

His conclusion: "If New Yorkers are going to trust the Dems to run their city, the Dems have to start fielding candidates capable of winning that trust."  read more »

(Via Neighborhood Retail Alliance, which doesn't think Mike's so competent.)

Greg Sargent makes the case in The American Prospect for why liberals who like Mike should vote for Freddy anyway.

"New York's mayoral election poses a dilemma for liberal Dems," he writes. "New Yorkers may well decide that Bloomberg is superior to Ferrer, and vote accordingly."  read more »

He has an interesting point about how Bloomberg helps the national GOP, though I'm not sure how many actual voters see this as a central dilemma.