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Democratic Party sources tell us that Barbara McIlvaine Smith has won the recount for the 156th District seat by a mere 23 votes.

Obviously, this is subject to more lawyering — but as the GOP has already made and failed at a number of legal challenges to ballots cast, they don’t have a lot of bullets left in the chamber.

This sets up a great news/bad news scenario:

The great news: Smith will be a great State Representative. Running with her in 2004 in a neighboring district, I came to appreciate her work ethic and morality. She’s smart, dedicated and will be a big addition to the Chester County delegation and working with Sen. Andy Dinniman, gives the Democratic Party a real voice in Chester County. While I haven’t heard anything about the results of the race in 167 featuring another good friend, Anne Crowley, this is a big day for Chester County Democrats.

The bad news: can you say Speaker Bill DeWeese? Will DeWeese be prepared to carry the governor’s water in the house — or revert to his egocentric ways? Deadlock here could prove disastrous for the party over the long haul. Other bad news: whichever GOP was pondering a switch of parties waited a bit too long.

Of course, a ton of other questions: how will the GOP cope as minority? Will the change make John Perzel more or less of a deal-maker? All of this could prove very interesting to watch.

Between the holidays, illness and losing a fight to Christmas lights this weekend, it’s been a quiet time here in blogsville. Crappy timing after being added to PoliticsPa’s blog list — but stuff, and stuffing, happens.

If you wonder why people hate politicians — this AP story probably makes it clear. Yes, whining by soon to be former State Reps about the pay raise vote and, predictably, blaming the media for public outrage over the middle-of-the-night all-but-secret vote.

While virtually all quoted in the story are Republican, don’t think for a second that this isn’t a two-party problem. The House Democratic Campaign Committee threatened to pull support and funding from any candidate who spoke out against the pay raise. This came on direct order of slimy Bill DeWeese and Mike Veon, who as luck would have it, lost his seat over the issue. This tactic may have cost the Democrats two seats in Chester County, and worse, any kind of credibility as reformers.

I’m sorry, guys, people don’t buy that you’re underpaid for a part-time job — in fact, based on poor job performance, most people in Pennsylvania think the state legislature is overpaid. The fact that the members of the legislature don’t get this — even after being shown in no uncertain terms by the voters — is truly frightening. It sounds a bit like Kevin Federline whining about his poor album sales.

If you think voters were angry this election day, you might want to wait until 2008, because voters don’t take being told they’re stupid very well.

Recount, schmecount, it seems.

While Linda Cummings, the Chester County Voting honcho, works surprisingly hard to turn herself into the second coming of Katharine Harris — and seemingly shoots down every Democratic voter challenge, while welcoming all Republican voter challenges like they were long, lost relatives, I have learned that the contested races in the 156th and 167th districts may not decide which party will control the Pennsylvania State House.

According to well-placed sources in the Democratic Party (which of course, means no one in Chester County…ooh, cheap and unfair, since that couldn’t count Sen. Andy Dinniman or his staff which are both well-placed and clearly Democrats), Gov. Ed Rendell has convinced an unidentified Republican house member to switch parties and become a Democrat. Early speculation, completely unconfirmed, centers around George Kenney, the Philly member, who comes off two tough races to hang onto his seat in an increasingly Democratic district.

If it is not Kenney, others suggest one of the surviving members in Delaware County, all of whom are shaken by the loss of Tom Gannon and the end of the Curt Weldon era. Should, by some twisted fate, the member be Steve Barrar, I’d pretty much have to become a Republican on the spot, since he and I are completely politically incompatible. Of course, I’m pretty sure Hell will freeze over before Barrar switches parties, because he’d have to have that "I love Fox News Channel" tattoo removed from his butt.

Other theories have suggested Rep. Chris Ross, a moderate, pro-choice Republican, but I don’t buy them. As much as I’d love to have Ross in the Democratic Party, he’s too loyal to bolt on the Republicans at this point. I think he would only change parties as a matter of honor, if the party adopted a stance he could not, in good conscience, live with.

If this is true, and because of the source, I believe it to be, this suggests that we may be seeing a different Ed Rendell in the second four years. One can hope.

I‘m intentionally keeping a low profile right now, reserving comment on a couple of issues so as not mess with the outcomes of a couple of local races. Once the lawyers have had their say, I’ll have mine.

Donald Rumsfeld is not a nice man. He was not an able Secretary of Defense. But he was made the fall guy for the Bush Administration. People should not be satisfied to see ol’ Don’s head on a platter. One man and one man alone bears the largest responsibility for the thousands of deaths in Iraq. George W. Bush.

And nothing, not even a Democratic Congress, changes that one iota.

It’s morning and the votes are being recounted and lawyers are everywhere.

So what went right? Joe Sestak’s excellent campaign turned what looked into a single-digit win into a blow out. Even without the announcement of the Curt Weldon investigation by the FBI, Sestak looked to be right there, based on polling. Weldon’s baggage got to be too much and Sestak was just too good a candidate for the people of the 7th to pass on.

Patrick Murphy, it appears, won a close fight over Mike Fitzpatrick, as I predicted Monday, although by a slimmer margin than I expected.
On the statewide races, I expected solid win, not the blowouts by Ed Rendell and Bob Casey, Jr. Both numbers suggest GOP turnout issues, which should have helped a couple of other races.

Brian Lentz’ win over Tom Gannon for the state house in the 161st is a big win for Democrats and shows the Democratic wave continues it’s move westward. Even in the 160th, where I ran in 2004, Shawn Diggory put up better numbers than I did this year, showing an increased vulnerability, which means that seat has one or two cycles before it should flip.  What should be more entertaining, though, I’m told, is that Steve Barrar is seriously thinking about running for the 7th CD seat — I’ll pause for a moment to allow you to finish laughing and to clean up whatever it was you just spit out on your computer screen. Better, now? Okay, anyhow, Barrar for Congress is my personal dream come true — basically, the Showgirls of politics, awful but so compellingly so, that you have to watch.

Mike Veon’s loss — knocking off the Democrats’ no. 2 man in the state house — is probably good for the Democrats, long term. Better, of course, would have been the defeat of both Veon and Bill DeWeese, who appears to have narrowly kept his seat. Without new, and non-corrupt leadership.

What went wrong: Two words — Lois Murphy. Exactly as a I forecast Monday, she lost another close election. Why? Once again, she got crushed in Chester County — in some part, a self-inflicted wound. Sources within the Democratic Party tell me that GOTV resources were moved from her campaign to Sestak’s when her field director failed to respond to numerous offers of help. All year, for the second straight cycle, her staff didn’t play well with others, failed to engage the local Democratic worker base and ignored counsel from people who knew the turf.

As of this writing, Barbara McIlivane Smith trails Shannon Royer by 19 votes and there’s some question about changes in vote numbers, in favor of Royer, in at least one West Chester precinct. Anne Crowley lost by less than 200 votes…despite running an outstanding race. While the local Chester County organization deserves some blame, DeWeese also has to shoulder blame here, forced both Smith and Crowley to stay away from the pay raise issue or lose HDCC funding. That handcuffed the ability of both candidates to run as reformers, which might have made the difference.

So what conclusions should we take from these numbers?

While Delaware County rode the wave and made big gains, the wildly dysfunctional Chester County Democrats couldn’t even tread water. The loss in the 6th District is probably the most galling — based on how races went elsewhere in the region, this race shouldn’t have been a loss. Once again, Chester County was a black hole — and the county party’s ground game was lousy. While there are some people who are good at raising money and getting things organized within the party, there is a lack of overall strategic ability and zero media ability.

Worse, when it comes to the state house races, no one was there to pick up the pay raise issue. When I planned to run for county chair myself in the early spring, I pointed out the holes in both those areas, that the party needed an attack dog as chair. Michele Vaughn, who ultimately won the chair election was little more than a yappy Pomeranian.

In short, there’s no excuse for losing these three races and I lay a lot of the blame on the Chester County Democratic Party. Without major changes, you can expect the same pattern to continue next year during the race for county commissioner.

Voting was a bit of mess, with many people finding the new optical scanner system used in my precinct confusion and uncomfortable. At least, though, it has a paper trail. So, I’ll reserve judgment. Maybe the better news is that the election fraud looks to have been pretty close to equal on both sides. That’s good news for our democracy.

As promised, although somewhat abbreviated due to illness, here are my election predictions.

Let’s get the easy and simple ones out of the way: Bob Casey, Jr. wins by about 8 points. Ed Rendell wins a second term as governor, but doesn’t break 60 percent (in fact, he might not break 55, because, based on the sample of folks I’ve talked to, while they’d never vote for Lynn Swann, they won’t vote for Rendell, either).

Congressional seats:

PA-7: Sestak over Weldon by 6 points. The GOP ground game might take a hit, but you have to still think the margin will still be hurt by better Republican turnout. It’s a nice, solid win for the Democrats in a district that is increasingly leaning Democrat.

PA-6: I still have a bad feeling here. It literally could go either way. If you put a gun to my head and forced me to make a call, I’ll say Gerlach holds off Murphy by a sliver, less than the margin of 2004 and possibly an outcome that gets contested in court.

PA-8: this is the war referendum district and I think the polls are light on this race — more people privately oppose the war than admit it. Patrick Murphy wins by four.

PA-10: Carney over Sherwood. Give the points. Seriously.

State house:

Democratic winners — Barbara McIllvane Smith, Anne Crowley and Brian Lentz will win — at minimum.

How to measure the outcome: if there’s no wave on Tuesday it won’t be because of a sudden change of opinion, but rather wholesale vote fraud using electronic voting devices. If the press fails to pursue it — and I think this time, they will — the republic is lost and our democracy will have ended.

The most likely scenario has the Democrats taking back the house, with the Senate kind of iffy. Assuming election fraud in minimal and balance by both sides, i like the Democrats to pick up six seats and take back control.

Yesterday, PoliticsPa.com reported that the Republican Party had decided to pull out its assets for its usual 72-hour GOTV program in Delaware County.

While this move all but puts a fork in Weldon, it has farther reaching effects. Let’s just say this: were I State Rep. Tom Gannon, I wouldn’t be sleeping peacefully right now. His race with Brian Lentz was close enough already, but without the vaunted GOP turnout machine running at full power (and while the county GOP bosses will try something, anything to keep Tuesday from being a disaster, long-term trends moving east to west in Delaware County suggest it is a task akin to sweeping back the ocean) you could see the beginning of the end of the Delco GOP machine. Even long-time Weldon supporters, firemen and so on, think Weldon’s corruption charges are enough to run him out of office. So, it’s no surprise the NRCC is bailing.

With Weldon likely losing to Joe Sestak and Lois Murphy clinging to a lead over Jim Gerlach, it looks like Democrats will finally be able to build a strong beachhead in Delco and Chester County. A number of state rep races, particularly in Chester Co., look to flip to Democrat — something that should start evening out the flow of money in the county between the two parties, as businesses recognize the need to hedge their bets.

I’ll take a closer look Monday at all of the races and offer my predictions, plus what the final congressional numbers look like.