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The was a little something for everyone this year. The map won, and so the establishment could gloat about that. The two Republicans who co-chaired the redistricting committees ended up in elected office (Doug Steinhardt in the state Senate; and Al Barlas, by the looks of how 2023 is coming together, in the Assembly).

Then there was Tom Kean, Jr. After years of failing to knock the ball off the tee, the map gave him 17,000 additional Republicans to work with, which he did, knocking off Democratic incumbent Tim Malinowski in CD-7.

The Democrats’ got rid of Malinowski to assist Mikie Sherrill and Josh Gottheimer, whose victories, when coupled with Andy Kim, enabled the party in power to fulfill the promise of the map by shaving just one congressperson out of the delegation to go from 10-2 to 9-3.

In what was supposed to be a red wave backlash against Joe Biden, democrats had come out of the year with just a single casualty, and promptly set about high fiving one another with abandon.

They got what they wanted, and Steinhardt, Barlas and Kean got what they wanted.

Everyone was happy.

And, oh, yeah, the people, they felt like they got what they wanted, too, which in New Jersey, included some gratuitous roughing up of Donald Trump and his merry band of anarchists, who himself appeared to be gratuitously hanging around, prompting routine backroom cries of “Where’s Merrick Garland?”

Of course, what Democrats here don’t want to acknowledge is the role they played in making Trump, ramrodding his Samuel Taylor Coleridge vision of realty right here on the boardwalk, where what comes to Atlantic City, and what happens in Atlantic City, doesn’t stay in Atlantic City.

But might someday become President, and an ongoing national embarrassment.

See you on the slot machines, everybody and go Jets!

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