On MSNBC, 12 minutes after the first polls had closed, and with results that put McCain up 8 delegates to 3, Pat Buchanan wondered whether we were not entering a new liberal era. An hour later, with a few more polls closed, and Obama up but nowhere near a final result, Chris Matthews said that the Republican brand had been completely repudiated.
At 8:30, after Virginia, North Carolina and Indiana still had not been called for Obama, Matthews and company quizzed David Axelrod on whether the 50 state strategy might have been a mistake.
By 9pm, Pennsylvania had been called for Obama. And still there was handwringing, because Obama had not yet won any of the expected swing states. And despite those Times reports, CNN at least still didn’t even speak about Obama’s certain victory after Ohio broke for him.
It was fascinating to watch. And despite all the reporting that Obama had turned a new page on politics, had tossed aside the old rule book, etc., etc. the news analysis, done mostly by the McCain/Clinton baby boomer generation, struck me as often a little giddy but still somehow about 3 steps behind in its ways of thinking, or at its best simply unsure how to understand what was going on. CNN had holograms, for God’s sake. It actually identified speakers as reporting "live via hologram."
The heart of Obama’s call seems to be a new or renewed way of thinking about America. And as that challenged and will continue to challenge both Democrats and Republicans who’ve been stuck in a street fight for decades now, I wonder if it won’t call on the transformation of our media, as well.
