Wednesday, February 06, 2008

Dewey Defeats Truman

In an effort to avoid some of the intrusive graphics and over-the-top commentary of the cable news channels, I tried watching campaign coverage on PBS tonight. Two things happened:

(1) PBS, apparently relying on the AP, called Missouri for Hillary Clinton pretty early in the night. When it did so, most of the precincts had reported and Hillary had a three-point lead. But St. Louis City, St. Louis County, and Columbia (home of the University of Missouri) still had nearly all their precincts outstanding! Unsurprisingly, the call ended up being wrong. It's not good when a news outlet makes a prediction that anyone with access to the county-by-county vote totals on cnn.com could tell was wrong.

(2) PBS cut away from Obama in the middle of his speech to show us a bunch of random pundits blathering on about the same things they'd been talking about all night.

PBS is now dead to me, campaign coverage-wise.

Also, MSNBC is now noting that a Missouri statute provides for a recount in elections as close as this one, but wouldn't that be incredibly silly in a state with proportional delegate representation?

Monday, February 04, 2008

Vote!

Those of you in Super Tuesday states should go vote tomorrow. Or, if you're lucky, caucus, because caucusing is awesome.

My state's primary isn't until March, so I will be sitting at home and watching punditry all night, flipping between the sane, thoughtful commentary of Mark Shields and David Brooks on PBS and the enthusiastic, incoherent ranting of Chris Matthews on MSNBC.