Laughlaughlaughlaughlaugh

Watching the Democrats kick hell out of the Grand Oil Party makes for fantastic late-night viewing. The House is locked down. The Senate is very, very likely to fall one vote over into Blue Territory (a slightly Yellowish Blue, but still). Butt-juice got axed. Ford didn't win, but he was maybe the most conservative of all the conservative Dems to revolt. I still would have voted for him, though.

So mostly I switched back and forth between CNN's and FoxNews' coverage of the whole thing, which was like night and day. CNN had Lou Dobbs playing overseer and a dynamic Anderson Cooper jumping between and ring-leading two different desks. The first had three senior correspondents providing a lot of overall information in a fairly non-partial way. The second had two Dems (Cryptkeeper James Carville and someone from Clinton's admin whose name I should probably know) and two Reps (Radio shlock-jock Bill Bennet and some black Con who is not Alan Keyes whose name I should probably know). Cooper, who is not my favorite, hurricane-boy or not, did a good job of getting these big personalities to play off of each other without things getting out of his control.

On top of that, they had Wolf Blitzer in front of a huge screen which the cameras could pan over for a myriad of different result displays. His partner (whose name I don't remember; I'm really going to have to get some pen and paper out the next time I do this) had his own gadget to play with down on one end; a touch-screen job that gave graphical overviews of the House and Senate that was as cool in its own way as the huge pan-screen, although often the information provided seemed a little redundant. I'd say the two had no chemistry, but maybe they did in a kind of odd couple sort of way: Wolf, the macho one with the expansive screen giving a lot of small, specific results; glasses-guy with the overall analysis on the small screen that he could manipulate directly. They spent a lot of time stepping on each other's shoes, especially Wolf having to deal with the nerdy guy's bad habits in Wolf's "territory." But all the reportage was done and maybe it was even a little endearing.

And, so, FoxNews. Look, at this point maybe these guys are easy targets. Maybe they wanted to downplay their coverage because everyone associates them with the party against which the current winds are blowing. But their coverage was pathetic (or at least the presentation was). I've seen better from third-rate sports coverage. And the people interacting with each other kept making stupid partisan jokes with absolutely no one there to reign them in (like Cooper) or display some detached authority (like Dobbs). It was pretty pathetic. The graphics looked like something an 8 year old made in MSPaint. Maybe Rupe Murdoch needed to buy a couple of new yachts. Maybe the Simpson's movie is way over budget. Maybe this is their ass-backwards and cynical attempt at downplaying the Dems victory (I just noticed on the newswire that the Dems are claiming Montana. Woo-hoo!). All I know is that it paled in comparison to CNN's coverage.

Which is probably another reason to not take FoxNews seriously, if you haven't already figured that out.

The only cynical thing I have to say is that maybe Rove et al dropped this ball because they wanted a stronger run at the '08 presidency. (They may have even been testing out strategies with Arnold's CA Governor race; a comment was made that a team of White House staffers moved into his camp to resuscitate his numbers, which were about the same as Bush's.) If the Dems don't jump on this opportunity and get things done they'll be handing the momentum back across the aisle, sure enough. But I think Pelosi knows what it's going to take to get consensus out of her newly big-tented party, and I think her constituents back in San Fransisco are sophisticated enough to let her do what she needs to do. So I have high hopes. As long as those fuckers don't steal Virginia back from us.