It’s the counting, stupid.

Full-page Sun-Times ad a week ago, Nov. 12, on page 29 for the annual Haymarket Center fund-raiser on Nov. 27, had Ald. Ed Burke and his wife, Illinois Supreme Court Justice Anne Burke, named and prominently pictured as guests of honor and winners of the annual Father Mac award, named after the Haymarket founder the late Msgr. Ignatius McDermott. The center does rehab for chemically dependent people.

But today, Nov. 19, same ad runs on page 4 of S-T with Father Mac himself taking Anne Burke’s place in the right-hand picture and Ed Burke alone named as honored guest!

Whatever happened to Anne Burke????

Top of the chart in his SAT. Give that kid the day off.

. . . Another misplaced priority for Obama, maybe comparable to “health reform” while the economy nosedived. Cement the base, first duty is to win. Go unions.

. . . says Gallup. THEY WILL BE DISAPPOINTED!

RW Emerson on “Monday in the mall”:

“We grant no dukedoms to the few,
We hold like rights and shall;
Equal on Sunday in the pew,
On Monday in the mall. [italics added]
For what avail the plough or sail,
Or land, or life, if freedom fail?”

In other words, what ere the grand presidential, congressional, or agency plan for the betterment of “humankind,” so what, “if freedom fail”?

Ryan for speaker.

What do you know about this! You mean communists and Nazis in same boat? what next, socialists? Democratic [sic] socialists? Well I never!

This rundown by Byron York notes, with others, I’m sure, that Romney got burned early by Obama’s negative ads and did not respond in his own defense. Did not set his people on fire, as Obama did almost exclusively.

In the end, while Obama, with all the advantage of incumbency, soared with his base, Romney couldn’t fully connect with voters who might lean Republican. “My general impression is that the base, the activists — the people you need — never emotionally invested in Romney the way they emotionally invested in George W. Bush,” says a senior GOP operative involved in the campaign. Maybe not even as much as they invested in McCain.

For what it’s worth, I remember in the final days, glued to Fox and even CNN throughout the day, my wife and I got to finishing (too long) stories by Romney on the stump before a succession of very big crowds. We knew how they ended. He had the one speech. It got boring. We never hesitated in voting for him, but others? The ones who didn’t vote at all?

More blacks voted, fewer whites, in Ohio, Obama won. His black constituency was on fire for him, economics be damned.

Reminds me of Congr. Danny Davis (D-IL), who told a black audience in 2009 he didn’t care what Obamacare would cost and was applauded. They didn’t either. It’s a black “thang,” as a phony civil rights type I knew used to say on Roosevelt Road in the mid-’60s.