What did you do on election day?

I wonder what happens?

As you read this, you know. As I write it, I do not.

Does the election of 2006 go as predicted, with Democrats balancing the power with Republicans? Or does it end in a dead heat in key states, delaying victory to the victors and the voters, until almost nobody cares anymore?

Does Alan Hevesi’s last-minute ad apologizing for his uncharacteristic abuse of power pull him out of political purgatory long enough to keep a competent person in charge of the pensions of state workers? Or do we pay for his human frailty twice—once with another loss of faith in an elected official, and twice with an incompetent hack running the complex financial empire that is New York?

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What happened? What’s next?

By SKIP MENDLER

Greetings from the past—specifically, the weekend before the election. Something just happened to you folks in the future, out there in that unknown territory called “next Tuesday,” and I have no idea what it was.

For you, the news might now be of the pathetic failure of Democrats to dislodge Republicans from control of Congress, and the triumphalist orgies of vindicated Bushites who now seem to have no restrictions on their power. Or, maybe there’s some fretting about the apocalypse sure to follow with Nancy Pelosi running the House… and Democrats coming to the sobering realization that they have only two years to produce concrete results.

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