Results don’t fool me: Bloomberg was still inevitable.
So, how about that New York City mayorial race, huh?
At about 9 pm Eastern Time, the candidates and the media prepared to go through the ritual motions of lop-sided election races. William Thompson reportedly was preparing to call Bloomberg. Some media outlets automatically called the election.
Then the ballots were counted. And the results showed. Bloomberg up by a point. Two points. Holding steady at a point. I imagine Thompson hurrying to write up a possible victory speech, a bit surprised by these circumstances.
I have no dog in this fight, but at this point I would admit I love a good upset, and bizarre scrambling electoral circumstances, and the biggest upset in American political history since Truman has a nice ring to it.  Thinking about it, the lesson would have been to pin-point when the diminishing returns of media saturation diminish to the point where it has negative value — complacency run amok.
There’s a couple ways of looking at the too-close result. I am back to the cynical. Bloomberg’s mega-bucks spend to make sure there’s no contest worked, weirdly and a bit deceptively sling-shotting a few points back in the process. The question becomes whether money might have reallydone anything for Thompson. And if an actual known name with historic electoral backing — Anthony Wiener — wouldn’t have had the effect of putting in different dynamics that would have resulted in the same effect.
Across the way, Chris Christie won election in New Jersey, reviving the old William Howard Taft wing of the Republican Party. And you know what I mean.