Here’s a figure for you all — Bloomberg probably spent $100 million to win a third term with about 550,000 votes (about 200,000 fewer than he received in 2005). That’s somewhere around $180 a vote. There’s your mandate.

The Bloomberg victory speech was horrifying in several ways, not least of which being that the mayor conflated his “squeaker” with talk of a Yankees ticker tape parade. Talk about wishing bad luck on oneself:

Thank you. Gracias. What a week this is turning out to be. Tonight, a hard-fought victory in a very difficult year, and — who knows? — maybe in a few days, the biggest victory parade that Broadway has ever seen.

Thank you, Jimmy Fallon, that was maybe the nicest thing a Red Sox fan ever said about a Yankees fan, and I appreciate it.

. . .

Will the Yankees win Game 6? You better believe it.

The problem here of course being that Jimmy Fallon only became a Red Sox fan after running around like an idiot for that one movie, and his true allegiance is basically disputed. No matter — baseball, like politics, is full of bandwagoning idiots.

But Jimmy Fallon aside, the mayor really needs to purge Howard Wolfson from his mental space (I need to purge Howard Wolfson from my mental space) — the spin of this being “a very difficult year,” which Wolfson also tried using last night, is especially specious. The mayor’s narrow victory wasn’t because the economy sucks, it was because he overturned the will of the voters without a referendum and poured $100 million into a campaign. Be upfront about this. Quit bullshitting. The election is over.

Speaking of the narrow victory, I also think the media is to blame for making this out to be a landslide from day one:

Still, the margin seemed to startle Mr. Bloomberg’s aides and the city’s political establishment, which had predicted a blowout. Published polls in the days leading up to the election suggested that the mayor would win by as many as 18 percentage points; four years ago, he cruised to re-election with a 20 percent margin.

How no outlet could have honestly reported the closeness of the race in the weeks leading up to it seems particularly egregious. Here’s one example of bullshit spin from October 30:

The Thompson campaign keeps insisting that momentum is on their side in the closing days of the mayoral campaign. But a poll released Friday by the Marist Institute for Public Opinion suggests otherwise.

The survey, like other recent polls, shows Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg with a commanding double-digit lead over his Democratic opponent, William C. Thompson Jr., the city comptroller.

. . .

On Thursday afternoon, the Thompson campaign released the results of an internal poll that portrayed the race as much closer, with Mr. Bloomberg leading Mr. Thompson by just 8 percentage points. But internal polls are notoriously suspect.

In a news release on Friday, Howard Wolfson, a Bloomberg campaign spokesman, dismissed Mr. Thompson’s poll, saying that it “gives new meaning to the term margin of error” and that every other reliable public poll done over the past month confirms Mr. Bloomberg’s comfortable lead.

There are so, so many other examples that it’s hard to pick just one. But a prime example of conventional wisdom appeared in the election day Times op-ed from Joyce Purnick. Purnick is someone who is very up on Bloomberg’s machinations, having just written a book about the mayor, and her tone — like the tone of nearly every piece written about the election — was that the result was always a foregone conclusion:

Memo to the 108th mayor of New York, Michael R. Bloomberg: You didn’t have to do it. You didn’t need to set a new national campaign spending record. You didn’t have to become a one-man stimulus program, employing costly campaign consultants, ad producers and all those “volunteers.” You didn’t need that barrage of television ads, those wasteful glossy mailings or maddening robocalls.

None of it. You are the incumbent. You are in and destined to stay in after today’s mayoral election because — unless unduly provoked — New York voters don’t reject their incumbent. They’re pragmatic, even complacent, when their city is not in anguish. You could have spent more on your philanthropy and less on yourself and still be leading your Democratic competitor, City Comptroller William C. Thompson Jr., in the polls.

Even columnists unfriendly to Bloomberg bought into the inevitability — again, pick any, but here are two I remember: Patrice O’Shaughnessy in the Daily News and Clyde Haberman, who while continuing to go after the ridiculousness of the Bloomberg machine, did it in a way that telegraphed a depressing inevitability.

All of which brings me back to the Phillies’ Game 4 meltdown in the ninth inning, after the team tied the Yankees in the eighth, and Brad Lidge self-destructed, giving up three runs and ensuring that Rivera would close out the win; yes, the game was only tied, but the momentum was there for Philadelphia. The series was so close to being evened at two games a piece, and was especially painful for Phillies fans to watch. So was this election. Thompson lost by about 50,000 votes with somewhere around 1.1 million cast. What if things went a little differently?

What if, for example, Cory Booker wasn’t bought off by Bloomberg? What if Obama hadn’t been such a pussy? (And all that Corzine support got him exactly nothing in the end.) And most importantly, what if the media had been a little less incurious about polls and not actively worked to dissuade voters from actually participating? It’s true that this would have cut both ways — I’m sure many voters supportive of Bloomberg were apathetic about voting in a landslide — but the inevitability of a Bloomberg reelection was overpowering to watch day after day, and had to have had an impact.

Going back to that disgusting Times article about the campaign that they only published last night hammers home two big points:

Mr. Tusk, extremely self-confident and forceful, talked about “taking the oxygen out of the room”: hiring so many staff members, rolling out so many endorsements, and tossing up so many television ads that opposition seemed futile.

A sky-is-the-limit ethos, unfettered by spending limits, infused the effort. Mr. Tusk told his outreach coordinator for Asian voters, Oliver Tan, to find him a Bollywood star to endorse the mayor. After weeks of transcontinental phone calls, he did.

“It was selling inevitability,” a campaign adviser said.

Selling inevitability — and everyone — everyone! — bought it. Maybe we need to look at ourselves a little bit, too. The other part, the oxygen sucking, is well illustrated with the Cory Booker quid pro quo. Thompson just couldn’t get a break with any free airtime of the kind that Bloomberg got over and over again. It wasn’t so much the endorsement that Cory Booker gave Bloomberg as it perhaps was Booker actually shepherding the mayor around to black churches in Queens on the Sunday before the election — that of course became a big story for Bloomberg. If Booker had simply sat this out — and not crossed party lines to endorse a Republican — this story doesn’t exist, and oxygen remains intact. But Booker going as far as actually campaigning in Southeast Queens with the mayor was just one of many non money-related examples of Thompson’s huge, huge disadvantage over the course of this race.

The whole experience — from the furtive talk about running for president through to the City Council overturning term limits to the obscene spending and consolidation of power during the campaign — was profoundly discouraging. But you know what really got my goat? That insipid fucking new Black Eyed Peas song “I Gotta Feeling,” which was played before Bloomberg came out to speak; it’s lazy songwriting, tailor made for opening montages of televised sports events and, now we know, campaign appearances.

The other day I bemoaned the deleterious effects of this campaign on younger people. On our way out of the polling place last night, a cheerful high school student handed us one of the glossy pieces of Bloomberg campaign literature that this morning are littering the sidewalks of our neighborhood. The student insisted she wasn’t getting paid, though she did admit that a pizza party (Bloomberg spent thousands on pizza this campaign) was in the cards. I’m sure she was also angling for a letter of recommendation of some sort as well because, ultimately, everyone is in it for something. And that’s the real legacy of this dispiriting campaign.

See also: Bloomberg For Mayor 2009.

There are strategies and then there are strategies:

The Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union, which supports Mr. Thompson, the city comptroller and the leading Democratic candidate in the race, has begun a cheeky, defiant advertising campaign urging the mayor to “spend it all.”

And in other news:

State senators made a bold move Thursday to end their paralyzing stalemate: They packed up and went home.

After yet another fruitless negotiating session — which almost came to blows — the battling pols got out of Dodge to enjoy their long weekend.

But not before making sure they got paid.

. . .

A brief session Thursday to try to work out a power-sharing deal almost ended in fisticuffs.

Turncoat Democrat Sen. Pedro Espada and fellow Bronx Sen. Jeff Klein nearly got into a fight during the closed-door session, sources said.

“I was going to kick his ass,” Espada told the Daily News when asked if discussions got heated.

Espada — who was made Senate president in the coup — was angry Klein had joined peace talks just after sending out a press release bashing him and calling on Republicans to dump him as a leader.

Espada wanted to “duke it out,” according to a source.

“Let’s go!” Klein replied before new Senate Democratic leader John Sampson (D-Brooklyn) and the man he replaced, Sen. Malcolm Smith (D-Queens), jumped in and calmed the situation, according to the source.

Espada either left the room or was escorted out.

Klein would not discuss specifics, saying only it was a “heated exchange.”

“I can take it,” Klein quipped before poking fun at Espada’s residency issues. “He lives in Mamaroneck. I live in the Bronx.”

The Queens Courier has endorsed Bloomberg for mayor. I wasn’t cranky today . . . until now:

The Queens Courier is proud to endorse Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg in his quest for a third term because he cares about our city, its people, its cultural institutions and our future.

Over the years, we have watched as Bloomberg rode the good times, but always with an eye to the next budget shortfall. His business acumen is invaluable to the city.

He is a builder and an innovator. The 3-1-1 system is a tremendous success. His NYC2030 Plan, which includes planting one million new trees, is turning our city green again.

He knew from day one that education was the key to the city’s future. Under Bloomberg’s Mayoral Control plan — and with the aid of Schools Chancellor Joel I. Klein — the scores in math and reading have been going up steadily and the graduation rates are increasing.

Michael Bloomberg is his own man; he takes no money from lobbyists or special interest groups. No one has control or influence over his decisions — he makes them for the good of the people of Queens and the other boroughs.

A tough leader in a tough town, he has fought crime with a modern, well-equipped police force using leading-edge technology. Year after year, crime has decreased in the city, including a 17 percent drop just this past year.

Bloomberg knows that jobs and their creation are vital to keeping businesses in New York. He observes how resilient the private sector can be. Restaurants watched their patrons downgrade from steaks and a bottle of wine to burgers and beer and rebound to meatloaf and a glass of wine during the past few months.

It takes a leader, not a follower, to navigate the kind of economy that we will all have to live through for the next several years. Bloomberg is a true visionary who looks for the traps and pitfalls before we fall victim to them. He is already worrying about the 2011 budget as he keeps his eye on what Albany is doing too.

There is no other candidate currently running or contemplating a run for mayor that is as qualified and worthy of your votes in the coming Primaries and November elections. To cast your vote against Bloomberg and for someone else is simply throwing your vote, and maybe your future, away.

Which is to say, just when you start to root for Charles Barron, he goes and ruins it:

City Councilman Charles Barron of Brooklyn, who opposed the extension of term limits, said he’ll formally announce on Sunday that he plans to run for a third term.

Referring to his colleagues who joined him in voting against the extension, Barron said, “We were not against 12 years, we were against the process.”

In a brief telephone interview, Barron said he thinks only the 22 City Council members who did not “suck up” to the mayor and Speaker Christine Quinn on term limits deserve to be re-elected.

“Personally,” Barron added, “I don’t even want to run again, but the people around me think it is the best thing for me to do.”

*Michael Ochs’ liner notes from “There And Now,” the live album recorded in late 1968 and released by Rhino Records in 1990, explain that “Phil had just returned from the Chicago Democratic convention, where he had witnessed the death of democracy as he had known it.”

New York Post freakout coming in 5, 4, 3, 2 . . . blammo:

It was those damned geese!

A feather from a bird and “organic material” has been found on the engine, wings and fuselage of the US Airways airliner that crash-landed in the Hudson River, federal authorities said yesterday.

Investigators also have found that fan blades in the Airbus A320’s right engine “revealed evidence of soft-body impact damage.”

. . .

“What appears to be organic material was found in the right engine and on the wings and fuselage,” said the NTSB in a press release. Samples of that material have been sent to the US Agriculture Department for DNA analysis.

“A single feather was found attached to a flap track on the wing,” said the release, adding that the feather “is being sent to bird-identification experts” at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington.

It was the evidence of the old bird’s feather! It increased my fury as the beating of a drum stimulates the soldier into courage!

And after getting beaten up in the press — “This $1 billion-plus pavilion and park financed with a lot of taxpayer help is beginning to sound like something fit for the Wizard of Oz” — Yankee Club President Randy Levine should quit whining and take it like a man. After all, the team is getting $362 million in public financing — sorry, “infrastructure improvements” (what is that for, gold-plated sewers?) — for a stadium that is supposedly completely privately financed. To put this in perspective, Citizens Bank Park — home of the 2008 World Champion Philadelphia Phillies — cost $346 million total. And when did the Yankees last win a World Series? Oh, never mind:

Club President Randy Levine, speaking at a state Assembly hearing in Manhattan, called the project’s main critic “disgraceful.”

And the city’s economic-development chief, Seth Pinsky, accused the critic, Westchester Assemblyman Richard Brodsky, of “deliberately misrepresenting the facts.”

Brodsky, in turn, lashed out at Levine and Pinsky, challenging both to a “civil, in-your-face fistfight” over public financing of the stadium.

The angry club president replied, “In these tough times, you should be encouraging us to create jobs, instead of engaging in political grandstanding that discourages it. Your behavior in trying to hurt the people of this city is disgraceful.”

. . . and the good cheer . . . and no one really gives a shit about the jersey because, well, the Giants totally blew it against a team that tied the Bengals this year — a Cincinnati team that lost eleven games — and that Super Bowl win last year was obviously a fluke:

An hour after Philadelphia eliminated the Giants from the N.F.L. playoffs, beating them in a divisional-round game, 23-11, Brandon Jacobs walked toward the Giants Stadium exit.

Over his shoulder was his blue jersey. But as he passed through a narrow doorway, a gust of wind blew the shirt to the floor. Jacobs did not notice, so a man handed it to him. With his head bowed, Jacobs left with the shirt in his hand.

It was that kind of day Sunday for the Giants, who were looking to successfully defend their Super Bowl championship. They shouldered big hopes but let things slip away against the Eagles, who intercepted Eli Manning twice and came from behind three times.

After being barraged with “scary” new improvements and “privacy-limiting” geegaws, cab drivers apparently have finally stopped spitting in customers’ faces when asked to use technology:

One year after taxis were outfitted with machines so passengers can pay with plastic, drivers admit they might not like the new system, but they can live with it.

When the high-tech GPS and credit card devices were first installed in the city’s 13,000 cabs, there was fierce opposition from many drivers.

They would openly grumble if a passenger did not have cash — or sometimes lie that the machine was broken.

Drivers also railed against the company that had installed the machines, saying they lost money because it got to pocket 5% of each credit card fare.

“When drivers say it’s not working, they just don’t want you to use it because of the price they have to pay. But what you gonna do?” said cab driver Jean Francois after taking a reporter on a $3.70 ride from Chelsea to the West Village, earning himself a $1.30 tip.

“It’s business. Sometimes you lose; sometimes you win.”

During more than a dozen cab rides across the city over the last week, the Daily News found drivers now seem resigned to the new system.

When asked if it was okay to use a credit card, some replied: “Sure, no problem,” while others greeted their passenger with a more subdued nod of the head and “Uh-huh.”

“Mostly, the people still pay cash,” said another driver who took a reporter across midtown Manhattan. The ride cost $7.30, and he received a $1 tip.

“But I guess it’s good for those that don’t have any.

“I try not to worry about it. It’s just the system.”

The Taxi and Limousine Commission says drivers should embrace the machines, as figures show the average tip is now 19%, compared with 12% to 15% before the machines were installed.

“We have moved beyond the point of some drivers expressing a fear of the unknown about these systems … with most drivers truly appreciating their benefits,” Commissioner Matthew Daus said.

What happens when the boss is under house arrest:

Every day, dozens of employees of swindler Bernard Madoff’s firm report to their Midtown offices. They’re still paid — but they do no work.

The phones at Madoff Securities are turned off. The few computers that remain aren’t plugged in.

“It’s pretty bad,” one employee said. “We can’t conduct any business. We basically get there at 9, hang around, and go home at 5. It’s surreal. It’s also scary, because we don’t know what’s going on.

“We’re basically just sitting around and waiting for the call that dismisses us,” he said.

I buy it.

Richard Martin, the craziest super in Bay Ridge, has been fired:

“I’m losing my job as super of the building,” 72-year-old Martin told my esteemed colleague, Matthew Lysiak. “I’m being fired. It’s because of you and all that coverage – some Russian lady is buying the building and she asked me to leave. That means I’m losing my apartment — and my $150 a week — everything. I’ve done nothing wrong — I told the truth.”

By the “truth,” Martin apparently included signs he posted describing the tenants of 278 91st St. in Bay Ridge as “morons” and “retarded.”

. . .

“Fourteen years, 9-1/2 months,” he said. “The new landlord figured I was too much trouble. You know, Russian people don’t mess around.”

Although it does seem like the Reverend is lowering the bar for what passes as qualified when it comes to being a Senator:

Since the possibility of Ms. Kennedy’s candidacy for the Senate has, understandably, already generated a fair degree of debate and discussion, I feel compelled to state that I unequivocally disagree with those that say she is not qualified and could not bring needed leadership to this state and country. My knowledge of her in the area of education and on behalf of children generally, the fact that she has written several books[**], and her other civic involvement more than qualifies her to be Senator. Ms. Kennedy is an accomplished author on Constitutional Law, the Bill of Rights, and political courage. She is also a lawyer.

Elected office is not the only area of public service that establishes leadership in this country. We just elected a community organizer as President of the United States.

Harriet Miers was a lawyer, too! Oh, never mind . . .

On the one hand, it seems like it could be smart to have someone outside of politics hold the seat for a few years until an actual election happened with actual candidates who actually had to campaign for votes. But on the other hand:

In addition, a person with direct knowledge of the conversations said that Ms. Kennedy and Mr. Paterson had spoken several times in recent days and that the governor had grown increasingly fond of her. The person, who spoke on condition of anonymity to avoid antagonizing the governor, said that Mr. Paterson also had come to see Ms. Kennedy as a strong potential candidate whose appointment would keep a woman in the seat and whose personal connections would allow her to raise the roughly $70 million required to hold on to the seat in the coming years.

Under state law, Ms. Kennedy would have to run and win in 2010, to finish out the last two years of Mrs. Clinton’s term, and again in 2012, to win a term of her own.

Another person who had advised Mr. Paterson said that Ms. Kennedy could offer political advantages to the governor, who was elevated to his position after Eliot Spitzer resigned in March and in two years must ask voters to actually elect him as governor.

“The upside of her candidacy is that the 2010 ballot will read Kennedy — Paterson,” said one of those advisers, who was granted anonymity to speak candidly about the governor’s thinking. “David craves national attention and money. If you connect the dots, it leads to her.”

Look at it this way — voting in New York has always been an academic exercise. At least now they’re finally getting rid of the pretense . . .

*Even creepier than it sounds.

**Which books? Glad you asked.

Draconian cuts and or initiatives you read about on a Monday and shrug include but are not limited to: Shuttering the City Hall N Train stop between 11 p.m. and 6 a.m. (fine — walk to Brooklyn Bridge or Chambers Street — there are a lot of train lines really close to each other downtown) and taxing Coke (there are no Libertarians in a financial meltdown and $404 million a year looks pretty good right now — and why stop there — let’s do it for a lot more stuff, like cupcakes at Magnolia, gelato at Grom, chopped liver at Fairway . . .).

*Do you remember the time before he co-opted green causes for political purposes? That was craaaazy!