Where the state Senate goes next

I spent a few hours in Albany yesterday hanging around the Senate, watching protesters, talking to lawmakers and staff.

Here are four impressions:

1. Everyone’s pretty sheepish. The last month was a fiasco and everybody knows it. Would have been bad enough if Rome weren’t burning, but it is. We needed statesmen and we got barbarians at the gate. Now the barbarians are trying to piece everything back together, including their dignity.

2. Unless Republicans can win some elections, this was nothing more than a last-minute tantrum. And I don’t see any sign that the GOP is focusing on winning elections. Time is running out. Another loss or two in 2010 would lock in Democratic control of redistricting. That would lock in a permanent Democratic majority. Game over.

3. Lawmakers from both parties are still trying to play by a rulebook that just doesn’t apply anymore. That is, keep giving New Yorkers (and New York government employees) far more goodies than taxpayers are willing to pay for.

4. Lawmakers from both parties talk about reform. But they’re unwilling to challenge the leadership of their own parties, men who are clearly unfit to lead. The end result of the last month is that three utterly discredited politicians — Republican Dean Skelos and Democrats Pedro Espada and Malcolm Smith — are running the party machines.