Wednesday’s Red Wave Is Named Andrew Cuomo

The blood moon is gone, the blue jays are screeching, and it appears that old Sleepy Joe may have presided over the best midterm election in recent history for a party in power. Dr. Oz got tossed out like a bottle of old diet pills, the guy who brandishes a fake police badge and generally seems to not be doing OK is losing in Georgia, and Democrats appear to be in a good position to keep the U.S. Senate.

Here in New York, Democrats may lose their supermajorities in the state legislature, but Governor Kathy Hochul managed to stave off Lee Zeldin's billionaire crime wave by five percentage points (Hell Gate was at Zeldin's "victory party," read more here).

However, the Crime Is Really Awful In The City You Don't Even Live In playbook seems to have worked on Long Island, where Republicans are poised to pick up two Congressional seats. And upstate, Republicans made gains too. Overall, the GOP seems to have flipped four of the five seats they needed to in order to seize control of the House of Representatives.

That's right: New York, bluest of the blue states, may be responsible for giving Republicans the power to block a Democratic agenda in Washington.

Specifically, Andrew Cuomo bears much of this responsibility. Cuomo spent his entire time in office enabling right-leaning Democrats and Republicans. It was Cuomo who appointed four conservative judges who later went on to overturn the state's redistricting maps. Not only did they overturn them, they ordered a "special master" to redraw the maps to be more competitive i.e. favorable to Republicans (state Democrats bear some responsibility here because they fucked up their chance to tweak the maps a little before they went to the special master, and yes, for passing intentionally weak redistricting reforms to begin with).

Votes are still being counted, but a cool dude in a loose mood probably woke up in some pool house on Long Island today with a big smirk on his face.

More links more liiiiiiiiiiiinks:

—Mayor Adams is "disappointed" that the nonprofit that was created to, uh, advance his agenda gave $10,000 to Lee Zeldin.

—2020 Election Denialist Once Again Defeats "De Blasio Sucks" Ad Guy

—The initiatives on the back of New Yorkers' ballots all passed! That means $4.2 billion in climate spending, among other things.

—The New York Post sends a subtle message to two guys in Florida.

—Sarahana Shrestha is going to the New York State Assembly. Hell Gate profiled the upstate DSA member this past summer.

—Gawker is getting into the Sexiest Man Alive game?

—New York's trash problem is getting worse.

—When Governor Hochul shouted out State Democratic Party Chair Jay Jacobs during her victory speech on Tuesday night the crowd went like, "EHHHHNNNNNNN." This isn't a link but it was something we heard and thought was notable.

—Lastly: