It occurs to me that our Democrats haven't really yet made the larger, overarching case for why this state needs to toss the do-nothing, spend-your-money republican majority in our State Senate. So, over the last few weeks of the campaign, we're going to try to make that case here on the blogs with a view to several policy areas that will benefit immensely from Democratic control of the legislature. We'll be looking at things like Albany reform, choice, economic opportunity, taxes, civil rights, labor, and other subjects that really don't get treated with seriousness in the back-and-forth - "You're a poopiehead!" "No, you're the poopiehead!" - of a campaign involving the party of Karl Rove, Joe Bruno and George Bush.

I'm not alone in thinking that the most important subject at stake this year is Albany Reform, as articulated in the Brennan Center Report. Briefly, while the average New Yorker may think that we have a legislature - there are biennial elections, committees, bunting of the most convincing sort - that's actually not true. The two chambers of our legislature are run by two men, Sheldon Silver in the Assembly, and Dean Skelos in the Senate. By "run", you need to understand "no, you're a member of the other party, you can't have a pencil" and "no, sorry, your bill will never make it to the floor - ever" and "Oh, so you want a debate. Ha, that's cute".

Malcolm Smith and hiis Democrats have been adamant that they will enact the Brennan Center Reforms, probably with some minor filing at the edges. But the Democrats are serious about doing this, for several reasons: one, because a lot of money for our push for the majority comes from the reform community, and two, because it's the right thing to do for everyone, including republicans.

Now, passing these process reforms is not a panacea for what ails Albany; the conventional wisdom is that, once the Senate changes its rules, the Assembly will follow suit. I'm not personally very optimistic on that score, at least not immediately; there's been some messaging recently defending as much power for Speaker Silver as he can hold on to. But if you want to change the way Albany does business, and to make it more responsive to you, the citizen, your best hope - really, your only hope - is to help the Democrats take the Senate.