Election 2004

Ellen Gray: Now we play The Waiting Game

2:00: "We're prepared to stay here and we hope you are, too," said Tom Brokaw a few minutes ago.

Easy for him to say -- it's Brokaw's last election as anchor. Four years from now, he'll be at most a talking head emeritus, free to wander off the set for a nap whenever he likes.

On CNN, Jeffrey Toobin and Judy Woodruff are doing the math in Ohio -- which CNN hasn't yet called, though NBC and Fox News Channel have moved it to Bush's column -- and they're suggesting that there may be as many as 600,000 votes still unaccounted for there.

Plus, it seems that Iowa election officials, dealing with broken machines and worker fatigue, are delaying their final results till sometime Wednesday. Which is already today.

It's been a long night. It could be a longer morning.

12:35: This is where it all started to get interesting four years ago -- well after midnight and no clear end in sight. And, of course, they're still voting in Ohio.

The anchors should be starting to get punchy, but perhaps they got more sleep this week, knowing that this might happen, because most seem OK (though Brit Hume's looked a little sleepy for hours). As CNN's Jeff Greenfield noted an hour or so ago, most TV news people at least knew enough this year not to schedule any expensive vacations for some time after Election Day.

10:38: As I was listening to the soothing voice of Brit Hume, I apparently missed the first sign that Tom Brokaw may be, as a colleague puts it, "losing it."

He just said, "You want reality TV? We've got reality TV. Before the night is over, somebody will be voted off the island."

At this point, of course, it might be overoptimistic to think tribal council's going to end before dawn.

10:35: Brit Hume, introducing a live picture of U.S. soldiers in Iraq watching election results, seems mildly embarrassed as he realizes they're watching him on the Fox News Channel.

At first he sees the figure as talking head Mort Kondracke, but then corrects himself. "That's my tie."

Hume, for those of you who don't watch Fox News because of what Shepard Smith or Bill O'Reilly or Neil Cavuto might do to your blood pressure, is the best reason to watch the channel, actually taking the "fair and balanced" thing so far that even with 100 percent of the precincts in, he was holding off on calling a Senate race for the Republican incumbent in Kentucky, former Phillies pitcher Jim Bunning.

9:55: CBS publicists, busy as Texas beavers, have once again compiled their own list of Dan Rather-isms, including some we missed:

  • "Let's hit these biscuits with a dab of gravy." As he wraps up information so far at 7:26.
  • "Don't taunt the alligator until you cross the creek." On Joe Lockhart's saying the big voter turnout will help Kerry.
  • "Bush is sweeping through the South like a big wheel through a cotton field." On early Bush victories projected in Southern states.
  • "This race is hotter than the devil's anvil." On Kerry and Bush's electoral vote counts getting tighter around 8:00 p.m.
  • "It don't mean a thing if they don't get those swing states." On the fact it's still early and key states not counted yet.

    Meanwhile, Brokaw's NBC successor Brian Williams, has been waxing Dan-like on MSNBC, declaring, "We can't talk turnout till the last dog dies."

    9:50: Amid all the glitz of the networks -- and even most local stations -- WHYY's roundtable discussion, hosted by "Radio Times'" Marty Moss-Coane, looks positively homemade.

    Four people, including former Daily News columnist Linda Wright Moore, sitting around a table that's literally round and draped with a blue cloth, may have something to say -- but can they compete with the bright lights and election tickers that seem to dominate every other channel?

    9:20: While we wait for real news (i.e., Pennsylvania, Ohio and Florida), the war of words continues.

    "George Bush is sweeping through the Midwest like a big combine," intones Dan.

    Even NBC's Tom Brokaw has a Dan moment about 9:11 p.m., noting that it's a cold night down there on the skating rink and "it'll be an even chillier one for whoever loses this election." Catching himself before he can extend the metaphor any further, he goes to commercial.

    8:30: Finally, a Dan-ism -- or a Rather-ism, if you prefer formality -- as the CBS anchor declares George Bush's early lead "is as thin as November ice."

    Thin indeed then in our part of the country, where it's still quite warm.

    8:15: Suddenly, New Jersey's the apple of CNN's eye, having surprised the analysts by going for Kerry, or at least by going decisively enough to be called by 8 p.m.

    The network's talking heads, including Larry King, are also surprised by exit polling that suggests that terrorism matters and that it seems to have caused people to move toward Kerry.

    CNN's Jeff Greenfield, looking at the early call, first suggests that it means nothing more than "the pollsters must've been talking to the wrong people," but later dons his "humility hat," noting that "We don't know" why New Jersey went for Kerry.

    "I think the phrase we don't know may be useful" as the evening continues, he added.

    7:08: Rather is describing his thinking about the “big three, the middle three and the little three,” but disappointingly, this theory involves neither little pigs, blind mice nor bears, but states. (Hint: Pennsylvania’s one of Rather’s Big Three.)
    Meanwhile, on NBC, Tom Brokaw had his own fun fact about three: That’s how many people are needed to put Texas in place on NBC’s Rockefeller Center skating rink map of the U.S.
    After days of hype, I'm already a little tired of the skating rink map. But if it turns out those three people are actually on skates, I'll happily reconsider.

    5:40: Never apologize, never explain. Or at least if you're not going to apologize, don't bother explaining.
    That's our advice to Fox News Channel's Neil Cavuto, who earlier this evening was still trying to spin his "innocuous" suggestion that Osama bin Laden might have been wearing a Kerry button.
    He described this attempt at humor as "innocuous" several times -- his position apparently being no harm, no foul -- while reading e-mails from both supporters and detractors.
    Several writers suggested Democrats had no sense of humor.
    Not an impossible idea, but one that will require further testing.
    Perhaps next time Cavuto will say something funny and we'll see then.

    --Ellen Gray
    Ellen Gray's weblog runs twice yearly when she reports from the Television Critics' Association meetings in Hollywood.


    Posted on November 3, 2004 02:00 AM
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    I find it interesesting that CNN site has Kerry with over 65% of the vote in PA. Yet they say it too close to call.

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