Mayor Mike and Hojo Dean stumble into 2004.

Where will you be on New Year's Eve? Gabbing with fellow smokers outside an enviro-scrubbed bar, perhaps, cursing subway-riding, fake-Republican billionaire Michael Bloomberg for one of his more self-righteous dictums of the past year? Screw the smalltime entrepreneur, whose tavern receipts depend on actual customers, many of whom still (it's not 2014 yet, when tobacco's inevitably outlawed by some now-obscure Democrat) count cigarettes as a vice.

Oh, and I'm positive Mayor Mike will lower his confiscatory property taxes in the next 12 months.

On the plus side, the mayor won't be in a position to do as much damage as one might expect, since he'll be knee-deep in planning for the Republican Convention, which begins on Aug. 30. I hope it's an economic bonanza for the city, with both supporters of President Bush and anti-everything protestors laying down dollars at restaurants, bodegas, hotels, strip bars, ballgames and comedy clubs.

Naturally, not every politician is looking forward to Republicans visiting the city. Democratic councilman Bill Perkins, for example, is auditioning for the role of 2004's late-summer Scrooge, according to comments he made to an AP reporter last week.

Perkins, who represents Harlem, the neighborhood where Bill Clinton occasionally appears at his show office, dismisses the estimated $260 million New York will reap for the small price of several days of traffic jams, a swarm of journalists and the prospect of required reservations at the local Starbucks, let alone Nobu or Coco Pazzo. Perkins said: "[The Republicans] want to appear without substance, to give the impression of a commitment. Our city needs more than a temporary infusion of economic activity. It needs sustained commitment to schools, housing and urban health issues."

Tsk, tsk, Mr. Perkins: Mother Nature?not to mention David Dinkins?winces when a tile falls from the gorgeous mosaic that is New York City.

I'm a little off-track myself, thinking about the warm days of August when, one hopes, Gary Sheffield will be a target for Yankee Stadium bleacher drunks and Jose Contreras' birth certificate, unearthed by a New York Post reporter, will prove he was born just two or three years after George Steinbrenner.

Now, that's probably an unfair shot, owing to my own visit from Old Man River a couple of weeks ago. It was probably deserved, if only for taking my boys to a viewing of Bad Santa, a film so filled with foul language and adult behavior that my wife and I slunk down in our seats as the ugly story progressed. It's not as if they don't hear the words "fuck" and "shit" almost on a daily basis?it's no longer 1966, when grade-schoolers, at least on Long Island, almost never cursed in public?but when the nymphos attracted to Billy Bob Thornton's 21st-century Kris Kringle gladly took it up the chute from the liquor store cowboy, I closed my eyes imagining forthcoming retribution.

Sure enough, a few days later there was a slushy snowstorm here in Baltimore. One of the drawbacks of home-ownership is that there's no super to fix electrical snafus, unclog impossibly clogged sinks, catch mice and, more to the point, clear the sidewalk of snow. Handy Andy I'm not: Fixing a toilet and changing a flat tire are the extent of my getting-your-hands-dirty skills.

The boys made a stab at shoveling the driveway, sparing their ancient 48-year-old dad, but I was having none of it. A lifetime ago, my brothers and I would make the rounds of neighborhood homes on LaRue Dr.?once our own driveway was clean?shovel-for-hire, and pick up a few extra bucks. It was the winter equivalent of mowing lawns.

So, as nostalgia trumped common sense, I put on boots and gloves and got to work. I like shoveling snow, actually, and within a half hour our premises were fairly clean, and even the driving rain didn't dampen a mighty sense of accomplishment. I was just five or six loads away from completion, when suddenly a neglected muscle in my lower back exploded in pain, and left me in the embarrassing position of asking nine-year-old Booker to help his father up the outside stairs and into the kitchen.

Unable to bend over, I was helped into the shower by my wife, who was aghast at this dumb burst of machismo, and then lowered into an easy chair in the sun room, where I watched a bedraggled Saddam Hussein given the courtesy of a dental exam on every station.

Christmas Eve arrived, and with the aid of Tylenol and stinky applications of Ben-Gay, I was downright festive as 30 or so old Baltimore friends and neighbors stopped at the house for a late-afternoon party. One fellow, a former Maryland state legislator whom I hadn't seen in more than a decade, lifted my spirits even further as he discussed the upcoming presidential campaign. A lifelong Democrat, he didn't specify a preference for any candidate, saying simply, "Anybody but Bush." Considering the day, I didn't ask if that included Rev. Al, but did want to know just how born-again, man-of-God Howard Dean or Dick Gephardt (or even John Kerry, who's possibly in comeback mode) would defeat the president.

"Bush is so awful on the environment," my septuagenarian buddy responded. When I countered that absent an unlikely economic downturn (most analysts are forecasting GDP growth of about 4.6 percent, the highest since the Great Communicator was pissing off Democrats from the Oval Office) or a massive Iraqi civil war, the "environment" wasn't exactly an issue that'd decide the election, he refilled a glass of wine and just for a moment, became uncharacteristically gloomy. "Oh, I know," he said, "the Democrats are cooked. Bush has it locked up."

I don't think the president is a lock for reelection, but gee whiz, an editorialist at the Washington Times seemed ready to swallow hemlock last Sunday, worrying that the Bush-Cheney team's goal of raising $170 million in pre-convention dollars may not get the job done. The writer said: "For whatever reason, we don't think the Bush-Cheney campaign is raising enough money. This becomes all the more important in the wake of major Democratic fund-raising developments. In recent weeks, there has been a proliferation of well-heeled, Democratic Party-aligned groups, which are hoping to raise $300 million or more in soft and hard money to defeat Mr. Bush's reelection bid."

While it's obvious that both parties will exploit loopholes in the absurd McCain-Feingold campaign finance reform bill, upheld by the supposedly radical-right Supreme Court, it seems to me the Washington Times is working itself into a premature lather. There's little doubt that Karl Rove, should it prove necessary, can whip his operation into full alert and line the coffers further to combat the likes of Clinton loyalist Harold Ickes, the ringleader of a group called the Media Fund which hopes to raise $100 million to air advertisements in battleground states next fall, in addition to pro-abortion and union consortiums planning on similar, if less grandiose efforts.

In addition, Bush will be the beneficiary of at least two more months of intra-party squabbling among the Democratic competitors, the vitriol of which may even leave the nomination dangling until the spring. As reported by the New York Times on Dec. 28, Sen. Kerry is nuking Dr. Dean on a daily basis, providing rich fodder for GOP ads should the sourpuss candidate from Vermont take home the gold in Boston next summer.

Speaking in Manchester, New Hampshire last week, the polls- and personality-challenged Vietnam vet was on fire. Referring to Dean's dismissal of Saddam's capture, Kerry said: "It raises serious doubts about both his realism and resolve. When he spreads unfounded rumors about the administration having prior warnings of Sept. 11 and then passes it off because someone had posted it on the Internet, it leaves Americans questioning judgment and sense of responsibility. After every episode comes a statement trying to explain it away. So we're left asking, will Americans really vote for a foreign policy by clarifying press release?"

Two points, if I may. First, Kerry (and the media) can be forgiven if they really believe that even 20 percent of Americans are actually paying attention to presidential politics right now. But the above words will make for a powerful anti-Dean message in the fall, when voters are tuned in. Second, could it be that Kerry, in dialing up the rhetoric against Dean, is auditioning to replace Colin Powell as Secretary of State in a second Bush term? Not a bad idea: Odds are he'll be humiliated within his own party and will return to the Senate a rather diminished figure. Ed Muskie, who also expected a coronation, back in '72, never recovered as a leader of stature.

As for Dean, he may be suffering from psychosomatic mad cow disease. He filled reporters' notebooks last Sunday in Iowa, leveling a harsh attack against DNC chairman Terry McAuliffe for not mandating that his competitors play nice with each other. McAuliffe's in a tough position. On the one hand, he's indebted to the Clintons, who clearly have no interest in a Democrat defeating Bush; on the other, even an over-his-head strategist like McAuliffe has an ego and doesn't want the party creamed on his watch. Dean said: "If Ron Brown were the chairman, [the nasty squabbling] wouldn't be happening."

In addition, just as Slate's Mickey Kaus has been semi-predicting, it appears that HoJo is toying with a third-party run if he doesn't win the nomination. Also on Sunday, he made this threat, a symphony to White House ears: "If I don't win the nomination, where do you think those million and a half people, half a million on the Internet, where do you think they're going to go? They're certainly not going to vote for a conventional Washington politician."

Man, talk about a fat head. It's true that Dean has never held national elective office, but with all his flip-flops, backtracks and pandering, he's more a caricature of a Beltway insider than even Kerry or the hapless John Edwards.

MUG1988@aol.com