For Tom Dewey's sake (look it up kids) the boys at MSNBC made what could be the most embarrassing fumble of the entire 2008 election. While the electoral college tally still shows the candidates to be in a statistical dead heat--0 for Obama vs 0 for McCain--this morning at 1:15a, anchors Chris Matthews and Keith Olbermann, called the election for Barack Obama.
"Sure, it was humiliating," said an MSNBC spokesman, "but our exit polls based on the early, albeit extremely early, voting showed that Obama had built up such a huge lead over McCain in enough states that our computers interpreted the results as impossible for McCain to make up. That, statistically, put the win in the Obama column."
To his credit, Olbermann refused to report the announcement until he first corroborated the results with a second source.
"We had rehearsed the announcement of an Obama win for over three months and I wasn't going to blow it with a single-sourced story, "said Olbermann. "I placed a call to principals at the Obama/Biden campaign and asked if they thought that McCain could win the election. They couldn't find anyone there who felt he could. Only then did we feel confident that we could go public. "
Matthews refused to buy the assertion that MSNBC has been in the pocket of the Obama campaign since he announced his intention to run.
"We're not in the business of favoring one party over the other," said Matthews. "We are an objective news operation and being one, we'll wait until after the polls are closed on November 4th before we name Obama the winner."
Award-winning TV writer, Steve Young, is author of "Great Failures of the Extremely Successful" and blogs at the appropriately named steveyoungonpolitics.com.