New York City has recently seen more casualties than we'd ever imagined possible. There is one casualty, however, that lies buried not under the rubble of lower Manhattan but beneath the acrid smoke that has blanketed this strangest of mayoral elections; and this loss may well have a more enduring effect on the city's politics than the September 11 attack itself. In the October 11 Democratic runoff between Mark Green and Fernando Ferrer, the coalition that has sustained the city's liberal-reform movement since the 1960s (a coalition between blacks and Latinos on the one hand and white liberals on the other) fell to pieces.