Steve Sweeney dragged out of the rodeo on a stretcher left the rest of the political establishment in shock, gazing from face to face, petrified, wondering who would be next. Who would be the next to fall?

Prior to Sweeney’s political demise – in fairness, officials haven’t yet counted all the votes – most insiders figured they would offer up U.S. Rep. Tom Malinowski (D-7) and call it a season. The congressman from the 7th district already had a strike against him heading into redistricting and in a Democratic Party atmosphere eager to prune white males, he seemed like a natural fit for oblivion.

A neat little incision in the backrooms executed by soft hands would slice Malinowski away from Millburn (home to 6,136 Democrats), insulate U.S. Rep. Mikie Sherrill from any mid-term flare-up, and put a smile on the face of former Governor Tom Kean, Sr., who could watch his son, junior, who lost to Malinowski by 5,000 votes in 2020, finally hit the ball off the tee and go to federal office.

Otherwise, they expected to run the table, maybe even make U.S. Rep. Jeff Van Drew (R-2) work for it a little harder than last time with a more favorable Democratic district. Charitable tolerance might have described the pervasive mood among Democrats, who felt a little guilty growing indolent and loving it and might as well, like a luxuriating symposium of Peter Ustinovs in togas, throw a few scraps to the Republicans, poor guys.

That was before Election Day 2021.

Now, Democrats sweatily wondered who among them would suffer the fate of Steve Sweeney.

There were voters out there.

For years, the Bruce Springsteen album sleeves refashioned as establishment campaign messaging had lulled them to sleep.

But they actually existed.

Malinowski?

He could no longer wear the party motley alone in the cramped corner of everyone else’s sense of political inevitability.

Republican insiders who had themselves adjusted their redistricting priorities and honed their sights based on Business Insider’s takedown of the CD-7 congressman, stuck to the script.

“Malinowski, on the other hand, should just retire after his narrow win and spate of terrible press since. Democrats will be faced with a decision come redistricting. Try to help all four of them, jeopardizing them all, or throw Malinowski overboard in hopes of saving the other three,” GOP strategist Mike DuHaime told NJ.com.

But Malinowski had company.

The faces he saw were no longer sympathetic but grimly mortal.

U.S. Rep. Andy Kim (D-3) could have trouble.

His and Malinowski’s district resemble each other, at least on paper:

CD-7 – 178,631 Democrats; 166,466 Republicans; 205,563 7 unaffiliated voters

CD-3 – 182,121 Democrats; 171,531 Republicans; and 210,298 unaffiliated voters.

U.S. Rep. Josh Gottheimer (D-5), who likely would maintain an enormous fundraising edge over his GOP opponent, had another similar district:

CD-5 – 177,426 Democrats; 159,993 Republicans; 207,507 unaffiliated voters.

U.S. Rep. Bill Pascrell (D-9)?

Vanquished in 2020 66 to 32%, prior to Passaic losing commission seats in 2021, Republican Billy Prempeh was said to already be stumping hard.

Did Pascrell want, at his age, to charge headlong into the same tides that enveloped the senate president?

Forget about the backroom that supposedly doomed Malinowski.

Any one of them could meet his fate by getting dragged into a general election undertow, unhorsed by an electorate.

Now, if they wanted to feel a little better about things they could listen to those staffers who assured them that last Tuesday was not this past Saturday, and the passage of President Joe Biden’s $1.2 trillion bipartisan infrastructure bill would enable them to point to progress instead of stasis, including restoration of the SALT Tax deduction and, presumably, the beginning of the long delayed Gateway Tunnel project.

They would have to sell it, though, and convince actual people, indeed actual unaffiliated voters, that this money from Washington would produce actual and tangible results beyond the long beaks and plumage of the party patronage system itself. Even if some of the coming federal cash stayed out of the obvious troughs, Governor Phil Murphy’s bland, cookie cutter establishment messaging in this last Democratic campaign recalibrated for 2022 and beyond would surely guarantee that substance would elude the public.

Others squirmed in the aftermath of the last chariot race.

State Senator Fred Madden (D-4) escaped Sweeney’s fate, and now he would presumably want some padding for 2023, from the same South Jersey redistricting commissioner tasked with making life easier for Madden, who would happen to be none other than Sweeney, who surely would want some of Madden’s neighboring territory – or someone’s, his kingdom for a horse, or rather his horse for a recovered kingdom.

State Senator Vin Gopal (D-11) looked vulnerable. He lost both running mates.

Middlesex flexed its muscles after the election. But senator-elect Andrew Zwicker  clamed no easy victory, even against former U.S. Rep. Mike Pappas. As one insider pointed out: “Mike Pappas has the distinction of being ahead on election night only to be defeated the next day by two physicists from the same lab, PPPL. Rush Holt and Andrew Zwicker. Also Pappas… was the only incumbent Republican House member to lose in 1998, and NJ-16 was the only Democratic State Senate flip in the country in 2021.”

Maybe the GOP will run someone else next time. Certainly, Democrats in LD16 could use an elongated map during redistricting to increase the incumbents’ safety net. That would make their same party colleagues to eastward in Middlesex even more jittery atop blue collar towns that in many cases favored Ciattarelli over Murphy; and anyway, this map was a map already stretched to accommodate Democrats.

Who would be the next to fall?

Sweeney – if he fails to survive – had been one of the most energetic people in the party, crisscrossing the state to make the case for his Path to Progress agenda, perhaps at his own peril at turned out, given the red wave raging back in his South Jersey District.

But if Sweeney could fall, could any number of those in the establishment who had grown complacent, fail to animate and create, and attempt, in the best tradition of Ambrose Bierce, to at least give the impression of their own strife of private interests doing some public good? Would the tiny and tinny penetrations of yesteryear sufficiently saturate a public grown weary with the bubble wrapped dysfunctions of Washington, and worse, New Jersey?