When an incumbent runs for reelection, it all comes down to whether or not people think he's doing a good job, not a normal comparison between two candidates. Love him or hate him, Mike Bloomberg is sweeping toward a third term not because of his heavy spending or his weak opponent, as the credulous local press thinks, but because his job approval rating is 60%. New Jersey proves the same rule from the opposite direction: Gov. Jon Corzine's approval is about 35%, so even in a heavily Democratic state, he'll be lucky to scrape by. And! There's a Virginia governor's race, a special election for Congress upstate, big mayors' races in Boston, Detroit, Miami, Houston, Seattle, Pittsburgh and Atlanta, and gay marriage is on the ballot in Maine and Washington.

Yes, Bloomberg's spending wildly. He's hired half the city's Democratic consultants just to tie them down, robo-calling everyone who still has a land line, stuffing your mailbox, and taking out redonkulous ads like one in the Jerusalem Post edition that comes with the Sunday NY Post. His consultants have a vested interest in convincing a very rich man to spend a lot of money he won't miss. But they can't take credit for making the sun rise.

And sure, Bill Thompson's a weak opponent. He explains why NYC's Dems, despite a 4-1 voter registration advantage, incredibly haven't elected a mayor since the 1980s. As a fixture in local politics for the last few decades, one suspects that if Thompson had any stirring leadership qualities we would have seen them by now. He's made Bloomberg's override of term limits the center of his campaign. But the sad reality is people care more about quality of life than the niceties of the political process. If they like the incumbent, they don't even look at the challenger, those are the rules. You can't beat someone the voters don't want to fire.

But if you're an incumbent who the voters do want to fire, like poor Gov. Corzine with his 58% disapproval rating, is all lost? Well, you still have one option: disqualify your opponent. Making voters hate him even more than they hate you. Which explains the relentless, ungracious ads attacking Republican Chris Christie. Driving up Christie's negative ratings — together with the Democrats' strong edge in New Jersey, and the presence of independent candidate Chris Daggett to drain the anti-incumbent vote (as well as the all-important Chris vote) — is what has Corzine clinging to life. But that doesn't mean he'll pull through.

Join me below in the comments as the returns come in.

UPDATE, 11:30: Tonight's 49%-45% loss for New Jersey's Democratic governor Jon Corzine to Republican Chris Christie is a blow to Barack Obama, as is the 18-point victory in Virginia for Republican Robert McDonnell over Democrat Creigh Deeds.

But the President's biggest headache is likely to be blowback from the narrower-than-expected victory of Michael Bloomberg, edging Bill Thompson by just under five points, 51%-46%, after Obama gave Thompson only the most grudging of endorsements and declined to invest any political capital in the race. Democrats are going to look at this near-miss with anger, and at a time when Obama is already under fire from Democrats for falling short of last year's promised changes, and losing ground to Republicans in NJ and Virginia, he's likely to bear the brunt of the recriminations.

Those (like me, above in this post) who derided Mayor Bloomberg's huge spending as excessive now look a little silly: Just as JFK's father infamously forbade his son from buying one more vote than necessary — "I'll be damned if I'll pay for a landslide" — Bloomberg's $100 million campaign now looks to be a model of efficiency. (On the other hand, the heavy spending may have turned voters off.)

For the President, and liberals, the special election in upstate NY is one bright spot. Democrat Bill Owens is holding a reliable lead of 49%-45% over Conservative Doug Hoffman after Republican Dede Scozzafava withdrew, with 84% of the vote counted.

In Maine, supporters of gay marriage are narrowly behind, 48%-52%, with 76% of the vote in (with a number of Portland votes yet to be counted). But gay marriage holds a narrow, 52%-48% lead in Washington State, with 42% of precincts reporting.

The Virginia and New Jersey gubernatorial races have nothing to do with Obama or national politics, at all, except in that Obama did not do as much campaigning and organizing in those two races as the Democratic candidates would've liked. Otherwise, they are strictly local races and the results will reflect only the material concerns of the residents of those states. Still! They have been in the news a lot, so let us talk about them.

New Jersey: Incumbent Governor Jon Corzine is a very rich former Goldman Sachs executive. Despite that, he was a pretty good liberal Senator, for a couple years (he voted against the war!). But then, like a moron, he decided to govern the ungovernable state of New Jersey. He was promptly met with a government shutdown and huge budget problems and a populace that enjoyed the various programs the government provided but did not want to pay so many taxes all the time, or at all. And so he has had to cut spending, which makes everyone mad, and raise some taxes, which made everyone mad.

So waddling in comes Republican Chris "The Big Man" Christie, who has a brilliant plan: he will cut taxes! And cut wasteful government spending! Sounds wonderful! Christie was initially kicking Corzine's ass in the polls, and Democrats wrote off Corzine. But Corzine, who is very rich, remember, launched a hilariously negative ad campaign against Christie. Now, because Christie is fat and also because he's refused to give any details at all on what he would do as governor besides "not be Jon Corzine" (but mostly because he is fat), he is neck-and-neck with Corzine.

That tie is also thanks to this guy named Steve Chris Daggett, who is running as an independent, which means "the guy you vote for if you hate Corzine but don't want to vote for a fat Republican." Daggett is running on a platform of cutting everyone's property taxes, which is always a wonderful idea.

This one is a toss-up.

Now: do you see anything in that summary about Barack Obama's approval ratings, or health care reform's popularity, or Nancy Pelosi? No, you don't. This has nothing to do with anything besides the terribleness of New Jersey's government and populace.

Virginia Virginia does not allow governors to serve consecutive terms, which is nuts, but it keeps things interesting. So there is Republican Robert F. McDonnell and Democrat Creigh Deeds. But stupid Deeds is a rural southern Virginia Democrat, not one of the rich suburban northern liberal Virginians, so he is not really exciting those Obama voters! Or black voters! So the coalitions that helped Obama win Virginia will probably not be turning out for Deeds. McDonnell is a tremendous asshole but this race is his to lose. Once again: this has nothing to do with national politics, except that people who vote on national issues don't usually turn out for off-year races.

New York's 23rd Congressional District This one is wonderful. Barack Obama appointed a Republican congressman from a safe Republican upstate New York seat to be the Secretary of the Army. The local Republicans decided to nominate a local Republican assemblywoman to take his place. But!!! While she is a Regular New York State Republican, she is also pro-abortion and pro-gays. So, hah, the complete lunatics who run the national Republican party, with blogs and TV shows and so on, went nuts and decided to throw their support behind the Conservative Party candidate.

New York's Conservative Party was invented to police the local Republicans, who have a tendency to be more liberal than Republicans elsewhere, because they want to get elected. It was also invented so that William Buckley could run for mayor on a "John Lindsay sucks and I am so awesome" platform. (Fun fact: Buckley supported congestion pricing! And also police brutality. He was always big on police brutality.)

So! The regular "moderate" Republican candidate, Dede Scozzafava, was called all sorts of names by the internet, and every Republican who endorsed her, like Newt Gingrich, got called even more names, by the internet. The Club For Growth then organized the grassroots conservative campaign for the Conservative Party candidate, some guy named Hoffman who does not actually live in the district and who is also not very smart. Sarah Palin's Facebook page sealed the deal, and suddenly every Republican who wants movement approval and money had to endorse Hoffman. Scozzafava finally quit the race (though she remains on the ballot) and, hilariously, endorsed the Democrat.

Hoffman will probably pull this one off. Frank Rich thinks this is a good thing, because the Republicans are forcing out even more of their electable moderates, and making the party more extreme and more white. Josh Marshall seems to concur, comparing it to when Rush Limbaugh was making everyone apologize to him a while back.

And, ok guys, it is maybe beneficial to the Democrats for the Republicans to become even less inclusive and even less able to adapt to the new America and all that.

But honestly, because of our intractable and entrenched two-party system, all this really means is that the next time the Republicans take back control of any portion of the government they will be even more destructive and evil than they were before.

There is one last race you should keep an eye on, though:

Queens NYC City Council District 19 This race to represent Bayside pits Democrat Kevin Kim, who'd be the first Korean-American elected to the New York city council, against Republican Dan Halloran, who is a pagan lord who worships ancient Norse gods.

As the Tribune first pointed out, Halloran is "First Atheling," or prince, of a Germanic neo-heathenist "theod" or tribe. State records show that he incorporated the group in 2002 with the official name of "New Normannii Reik of Theodish Belief."

Colloquially, Halloran's followers refer to their tribe as "New Normandy," with a territory that incorporates New York City and parts of New Jersey (some of Halloran's Pennsylvania tribesmen recently broke away — with his blessing — to form their own group, which they call "Arfstoll Thjod").

Obviously there's nothing wrong with being a modern pagan (except that it is dumb), but this particular branch of paganism has been quite popular with white supremacists. Not that this guy his a White Supremacist! Like many Pagans, he may just enjoy playing dress-up.

We even got a tipster email about it from someone at the Post!

The New York Post is reporting that an assistant deputy director of NJ Gov. Jon Corzine's re-election campaign was arrested last night after cops found ecstasy tablets wrapped and ready to be sold in his car.

http://www.nypost.com/p/news/local/corzine_campaign_staffer_arrested_90W38gZ0Z0ZRfYDxgrAh3N

And that link from the Post now leads to a blank page. Same with WABC. Someone grabbed the Post report, which read like this:

Jason Shih, 25, was pulled over by East Rutherford cops at about 11:30 p.m. last night because he was talking on his cell phone on Route 17, said Lt. Chris Conforti of the East Rutherford police. Officers wound up finding 19 "blue star" ecstasy tablets in Shih's car, each wrapped in its own little plastic bag. Shih — who was stopped within 100 feet of Becton Regional High School — also had had "several hundred" empty plastic bags in his car, Conforti said. Shih told police he worked for Corzine's campaign, and had several campaign-related items in his car, police said. Corzine spokeswoman Elisabeth Smith said Shih is not on the payroll of the campaign or the New Jersey Democratic State Committee, and that the campaign doesn't know who he is.

That was at 2:30 PM, and the article's timestamp said that it was posted at 9:53 AM and updated at 12:53 AM, most likely with the Corzine staff denial that this guy had anything to do with them. So...what happened? One of three things. Conspiracy Theories, go!

1. Shih was planted by opposition to get busted by cops, to try and move bad press for Corzine. They only hosed the Post and one TV station. Weak.

2. The Corzine campaign actually knows this clown and there's a massive cover-up. Yeah, because a relatively high-ranking deputy working for Corzine's driving around Jersey today with a grip of Blue Star E instead of working at the campaign headquarters. This is about as likely as ecstasy becoming hip again is.

3. Some B & T ravebro was like, Brah. I work fah Jahn Cahrzine! And then the Corzine campaign got pissed, and called up these outlets, who then either removed the story because they didn't want to be on the bad side of the future Governor of New Jersey, or they're going to run a new story tomorrow about how this dumbass used a dumb excuse to not get out of a drug arrest, which you just know the Post can't wait to do. As far as the bust, the cops either saw what an assclown this guy was in plain sight, or they just don't give a shit who you work for in Dirty Jerz. You cross Johnny Law, it's oveh. And now you know. Also, 20 of Shih's "boys" in Jerz are gonna be so totally bummed, brah. They were gonna get the E and take it with their honeys and now they're gonna have to just drink a bunch of Patron, bro. Patron? PATRON!!!

This is very strange. Smith threw to correspondent Shannon Bream, who conducted a live interview with GOP gubernatorial candidate Chris Christie in New Jersey. She asked Christie some fairly innocuous questions, and when she tossed back to Smith, he asked, "When will you be interviewing Jon Corzine?"—the governor of New Jersey and Christie's Democratic opponent. Grimacing, Bream replied, "We have multiple requests, and when it comes through, we'll let you know."

Then Smith went off the reservation: "Wow. I didn't know that was about to happen. My apologies for the lack of balance there. If I had had control, it wouldn't have happened."

We're not really sure what Smith is so exercised about. It's certainly not unheard of for news organizations to interview one political candidate without immediately turning to his opponent for a response, so for him to decide at that moment that an interview with Christie was unbalanced enough to merit an apology—as opposed to, say, everything that's ever been on Fox News, ever—is very strange.

Before throwing to Bream, Smith actually did get a little unbalanced himself, remarking off the cuff that it looked like, according to polls, Corzine is going to win. He may have been apologizing for that remark, although that doesn't explain how things would be different if he had "had control." The funny thing is, while Smith was offering his analysis of polls showing Christie dead in the water, this is what his graphic said: "NJ GOV CANDIDATES LOCKED IN DEAD HEAT."

We're starting to suspect that Smith has been given the go ahead to become the in-house leftie at Fox News, and that his ever-more-frequent outbursts are encouraged by Roger Ailes to provide cover to the whole organization, not to mention generate the sort of drama that gets written about on blogs.

Corzine trails Chris "Fatty-Boom-Batty" Christie by only one point according to the latest Quinnipiac poll, thanks in large part to recent revelations of various small-potato Christie scandals and also the fact that Christie is very, very fat. (Also there is an independent candidate who is pulling in the "hate Corzine but can't vote Republican" portion of the electorate.)

So here comes Obama! Even though many people in New Jersey think Obama is actually literally Satan incarnate, he still might help energize Democrats. Not as much as, like, Springsteen would, but maybe enough to beat a fat guy across the finish line.

Obama will be in Hackensack on October 21, and he might even go back to New Jersey some other time before the election if things go well, or if Corzine pulls ahead in the polls.

"I'm speaking out only because I need to clear my name. I don't want this to hurt me with my union. I'm doing this 25 years. I care deeply about my members. The point is, even when we were together, there was always jealousy that I might be too influential but now people are putting a knife in my back. Characterizing me as a gold digger. Look, I'm from Paterson. My father was a factory worker. I thought rich meant having a fence in front of your house. Jon is a wealthy man but there was no asking on my part.

JON'S EX TELLS ALL [NYP]

P.S. Incidentally, we note once again that a Cindy Adams interviewee speaks in the exact same clipped-sentence manner in which Cindy writes most of her items. How does she keep finding so many like-minded people?

"It seems irresponsible to me," said Morgan McNeish, an office manager who said she had turned the accident into a cautionary lesson about car safety for her 7-year-old son. She said she worried that progress on social and legal issues might stall in the political void left by Mr. Corzine's hospitalization. "It's worrisome," Ms. McNeish added, "that the person you elected isn't able to perform the duties of office, and for something as stupid as not wearing a seat belt."