100 Things About the Election, Part II

The continuing series of things I noticed during and after Election Day that I considered important. In no particular order...

10. Four beautiful words came to me on Wednesday morning... Chief Justice Antonin Scalia. Not guaranteed, but at least it's possible.

11. I particularly enjoyed the crestfallen look Tom Brokaw had when NBC called Ohio for Bush. Speaking of which -- what kept the other networks from making calls, when the margin in Ohio was wider than the winning Kerry margin in PA? Between this mystery and the wide Florida margin that the networks kept calling "too close to call", I was convinced the media had decided that it could no longer hide its bias and just wanted to flaunt it.

12. Speaking of which... Peggy Noonan points out the big loser this election cycle...

But I do think the biggest loser was the mainstream media, the famous MSM, the initials that became popular in this election cycle. Every time the big networks and big broadsheet national newspapers tried to pull off a bit of pro-liberal mischief--CBS and the fabricated Bush National Guard documents, the New York Times and bombgate, CBS's "60 Minutes" attempting to coordinate the breaking of bombgate on the Sunday before the election--the yeomen of the blogosphere and AM radio and the Internet took them down. It was to me a great historical development in the history of politics in America. It was Agincourt. It was the yeomen of King Harry taking down the French aristocracy with new technology and rough guts. God bless the pajama-clad yeomen of America. Some day, when America is hit again, and lines go down, and media are hard to get, these bloggers and site runners and independent Internetters of all sorts will find a way to file, and get their word out, and it will be part of the saving of our country.

Damn straight. Someone get Dan Rather a hanky and a ticket to a rest home.

13. Then again, maybe Terry McAuliffe needs a new job. Has any party chairman ever been this bad? He's now peddling the idea that the Democratic Party is debt-free and has millions of new voters. That's great, but they keep losing! He reminds of John Cooper coaching Ohio State against Michigan. Maybe he's a Karl Rove plant.

14. The red-blue map by county, in case you were interested. That is an awful lot of red. Except for Vermont, which really explains Howard Deam in a nutshell.

15. I gotta give some major props to Pat Buchanan on Tuesday night. Dee Dee Myers and Ron Reagan kept trying to figure out ways Kerry could win Ohio while Chris Matthews stared blankly, and Pat kept pointing out the reality that Kerry was finished.

16. Letterman's Top Ten of Kerry Excuses contains one classic: Turns out voters think it's hot that Cheney has a lesbian daughter.

17. Dick Morris and Michael Barone speculate that those terrible exit polls were, well, fixed. I'm just ticked that I didn't gamble on the election right at that time.

18. Is it just me, or do the networks have an interest in making sure this is a horse race? Those ratings have to be great when it's a cliffhanger.

19. Man, the Redskins indicator failed. Is there anything the Skins can do right?