Abbreviated Pundit Round-up

WSJ on the still undecided CT Gov race:

In an election that included ballot shortages, changing tallies and an all-night hand-recount, Mr. Malloy beat Republican Tom Foley by more than 5,600 votes, the website shows. Secretary of State Susan Bysiewicz hadn't certified the results as of Friday afternoon.

Connecticut voters cast 566,498 votes for Mr. Malloy and 560,861 for Tom Foley, according to returns posted Friday on the state website. The 5,637-vote margin exceeds the 2,000 votes needed to avoid a recount.

If the results are certified by Ms. Bysiewicz, Mr. Malloy would be the state's first Democratic governor in 20 years, since William O'Neill served. He would replace Gov. Jodi Rell.

Malloy's not Governor yet, but he will be. Some of the networks are making that call.

Gail Collins:

Many women are horrified by people like Bachmann because they fear that when the rest of the country watches her bizarre performances, they see not just an addled person from Minnesota, but a woman in politics. We have to get past that. Men don’t cringe on behalf of their sex when Newt Gingrich goes Islamophobic, or Carl Paladino threatens to take out a reporter. There are many battles yet to be fought, but I think women have achieved enough success in this country to stop feeling as if Bachmann reflects on anyone but her party and herself.

Palin, meanwhile, was engrossed in her own postelection minicrisis when she "favorited" an Ann Coulter Twitter message praising a church sign that referred to President Obama as a "Taliban Muslim." Coulter would be another one of the women we are not taking responsibility for.

Many men are horrified as well. Why did otherwise sensible Minnesotans elect a clown?

EJ Dionne on Nancy Pelosi:

"One of the members called me and said, 'I'm in a tough race. It's even. I don't know how it's going to turn out,' " she recalls. " 'But I know one thing: that I wouldn't do anything differently. I wouldn't change my vote on health-care reform no matter how they tried to describe it. It was important for me to vote to give the opportunity that that bill provides.' "

"These members know what they believe in," she notes, channeling her own feelings through those of her colleagues. "They will have plenty of options in life. I hope one of them is to consider coming back to Congress."

Eugene Robinson on the truly historical effectiveness of Pelosi:

President Obama still has the ability to set the nation's agenda -- and also the power of the veto, in case of emergency. Harry Reid is still Senate majority leader -- and after the way he punched and scrapped his way to victory, who wants to mess with him? As for John Boehner, he'll soon learn that his new job requires a more extensive vocabulary than "no."

But amid the wreckage of Tuesday's GOP rampage, there's one person for whom I feel awful: House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. She's losing her job not because she does it poorly but because she does it so well.