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Midnight in Democracy Plaza
Rich Galen Wednesday November 03, 2004
From MSNBC's Democracy Plaza
New York, New York
1:07 AM Eastern Standard Time
You know you're at the top of your game when you get a call from MSNBC asking if you would be available for election night. After you break your arm patting yourself on the back about how far you've come in the world, they add the small fact that they would like you on between 2 am and 7 am.
"Oh. Sure. Yeah. Be happy to," you sort of mutter and make arrangements to get on the 8:30 pm Shuttle to New York.
The election was essentially over at midnight, Eastern time. If this had been four years ago, all the networks and the wire services would have called Ohio and Florida for Bush, declared him the victor and the celebrations would have begun.
But, after the embarrassments of 2000, everyone was gun shy and wouldn't call, wouldn't call, wouldn't call. About midnight the Associated Press called Florida for Bush.
Some people were calculating that if Kerry lost Ohio but won South Freedonia and North Moositania he could still pull it out, but everyone here knew it was over.
Craig Crawford calculated that there were 300,000 votes still out in Cuyahoga County. I said that with Bush ahead by about 140,000 Kerry needed about all of them.
At 12:59:35 the announcement came over the loudspeaker in the NBC workspace: Ohio. Bush wins Ohio.
Earlier in the day there were lots of long faces in Republican households as the midday, then the afternoon, then the evening exit polls showed Kerry leading in almost every important state.
However, those same exit polls showed Republicans running very strongly in the races for US Senate.
I asked the dozens of reporters who called me whether they thought it was reasonable that Republican Senate candidates would be running ahead of President Bush in state after state.
They didn't believe it was likely, either.
In a two-hour stint on BBC, I was steadily confronted by BBC reporters who pointed out that if the turnout was very large that would - by definition - help Kerry. When I asked why that naturally followed? No one had an answer. They just knew.
At the time President Bush was awarded Ohio, the popular vote stood at 47.5 million for Bush to 44.3 million for Kerry; a margin of 2.2 million votes for the President.
Nevertheless, the TV heads kept talking about how close the election was. How like 2000.
Hello?
Assuming all this holds (and I am typing as quickly as I can because I will be on the overnight team for MSNBC) then three people get a lion's share of the credit. One you know: Karl Rove. One you might know: Maria Cino. One you probably don't known Blaise Hazelwood.
They were the three people responsible for the "72-hour program," the effort which produced the turnout which matched - overmatched - the George Soros/MoveOn.org turnout operation in which the media had placed such faith.
President Bush has won re-election not just against John Kerry, but against a large proportion of the popular press and all of France.
Congratulations, Mr. President.
--END --
Copyright © 2004 Richard A. Galen
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