At the start of last night, Middlesex County Democratic Committee Chairman Kevin McCabe had the possibility of stealing some backroom luster from South Jersey for his own purposes, and reflecting that light in the eyes of North Jersey.

All McCabe needed was to get Assemblyman Andrew Zwicker (D-16) across the finish line in the 16th District to pocket another senator, giving him five total; while watching Senate President Steve Sweeney (D-3) lose Dawn Addiego in LD8.

Even if Sweeney won with Vince Mazzeo in LD2, losing Addiego – as every insider thought he would – would be enough to give McCabe, off the Zwicker win, a spring in his step. Sweeney would have had four senators in his regional base, McCabe five; and even if they didn’t move on Sweeney right away, having an extra slab of political muscle made for a holy sh-t headline, at the very least.

And people only read headlines, according to the bosses of New Jersey.

Sweeney, of course, could argue that some of those senators in other parts of the state, including Middlesex, could be counted on to suddenly transform into South Jersey Manchurian senators – forget about candidates. They were already in position. But McCabe could push back with a simple statement of fact – however strenuous for the state’s political classes – five is more than four.

Sweeney collapsing into the fiery abyss today along with Addiego and Mazzeo might have made for even more Middlesex muscle mass.

But alas, McCabe does not appear poised to grab the headline he craves, as Princeton plasma physicist Zwicker clings to political life support in his contest with the former congressman who fumbled away his office to another physics brainiac by  singing “Twinkle, twinkle little Kenneth Starr.”

Striking as he and his gang bum-rushed a flat-footed Somerset County to get the Middlesex-based Zwicker the primary boost he needed, the Machiavellian gleam in the Middlesex Democratic Committee chairman’s eye is gone in the general, or flickering faintly.

If Zwicker loses, Middlesex loses.

It’s not the wipeout South Jersey endured (Speaker Craig Coughlin remains on his throne and yes, Middlesex can more than count on state Senator Joe Cryan [he works for the Middlesex County Improvement Authority]) but it realigns the power potential of the North, where the Democratic Party’s (untapped, but for Brian Stack) pluralities reside in spades.

Middlesex’s power stems in part from having South Jersey in place as an option if the North gets cute.

The south in ruins means swing man Middlesex can’t keep its flirtation alive to give North Jersey fits.

Relieved of Sweeney’s senate presidency, the north can reassert its power by reanimating the so-called quad (Hudson, Essex, Passaic, Bergen, that same group that coalesced to make Phil Murphy governor), to pick – not only Sweeney’s successor – but the next governor.

Middlesex?

It gets to keep Coughlin as speaker.

Do that many dominos fall with such precise political alacrity?

Perhaps not.

But if Zwicker loses to Pappas, the dynamics of the state party tremulously in power turn the state on its axis, at least in that bubbled world of political insiders where Democrats abide.