Election Night Day

One benefit of living in Japan (and the 13 hour time difference from the East Coast of the US), is that all that election night stuff happens during the day over here. SO while people in the US are staying up until 4 AM trying to find out who won, it is just 3 in the afternoon here. The down side is, we watch hours upon hours of middle of the night election coverage...

So here is my analysis. The news media (at least the ones we get on AFN over here, which were CNN, NBC, Fox, and CBS) was plenty happy to call races in various states all day (or night in the US). This happened up to where Bush got just enough electoral votes to not quite win. CNN and NBC called Ohio for Bush, to give him 269 electoral votes, and FOX and CBS called Nevada, to give Bush 254 electoral votes. They then refused to call any more states (as that would have given Bush the solid win), and began into their "too close to call" coverage. It almost seamed like they were trying to make this election another 2000, and act like the whole thing was really up in the air. When you looked at the numbers, though, it was clear that Ohio and Nevada (and probably New Mexico) were clearly Bush wins, and the media simply refused to call them, because that would end the drama they were trying to manufacture. After all, who watches the election news after the winner has been declared (especially at 4 AM US time)?

So, the news media are a bunch of F**king liars (which puts them in good company with Kerry/Edwards), manufacturing controversy and indecision where there isn't any. At least Kerry/Edwards finally saw through all that in the Morning, and were good enough to admit defeat, rather than whine and complain about how unfair it was that they lost (a la Gore in 2000) .

I read an interesting blog about Kerry yesterday while I was watching election coverage. It proposed that Kerry was not a flip-flopper, but was rather a panderer (a point Saturday Night Live has also made). He does not have changing positions, but rather he holds no positions, and simply tells the group he is speaking to whatever he thinks they want to hear. I don't know why the Bush campaign didn't do a better job of establishing this.

At least in the end, no matter how close it was, Bush won...