On Wed, Nov 7, 2012 at 7:26 AM, Joe Hass <[email protected]> wrote:
> Sadly, I was not watching this live, nor in my quick scanning this morning > have I found the full 45 minute video. But quite simply, Karl Rove refused > to believe the news-gathering reporting of the network that employed him > and demanded, on the air, that the network stop everything and retract > their projection that Barack Obama had won Ohio and, therefore, the > election. They sent Megan Kelly across the building to talk to the network > experts who said they were "99.5% confident". Rove refused to believe it. > It took bringing in Michael Barone (who two days earlier had predicted Mitt > Romney would take 315 electoral votes) to talk Rove off the ledge and admit > that it was over. > > http://talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/2012/11/for_the_ages_4.php > A FB friend alerted me to this last night and I switched over and watched much of it live. It was really fascinating from a psychological point of view, to literally see denial of reality in practice, and then slowly melt away, at least in most of them, with a pounding from an avalanche of facts. I particularly like how the blond woman does not understand why it makes sense to move the people in make the projections at a network away from the the analysts and commentators who are talking about the results on the air (every network now does this - at most I believe the ones making the calls are actually sealed off and do not know what anyone else is saying). I was following the race while looking at NBC's county breakdown in each state - it was very clear even to me that Ohio was going to go to Obama, just because by far the largest fraction of uncounted votes were from in and around Cleveland. For a while it seemed possible that Romney might win enough votes around Cincinnati that he might be able to overcome that - but once enough of those votes came into to show that was not true, the outcome was obvious to anyone who looked at it - except of course Mitt Romney and Karl Rove. And, as I told my FB friends who were getting antsy with how long it took Romney to concede, I don't begrudge the candidate taking 90 minutes to really mull it over and let things sink in. I'm sure he had people urging him to content certain precincts in Ohio in court - but after an hour it was not only clear Ohio was not even really going to be that close, but that it was not going to be determinative, as he was loosing Virginia and Colorado and Nevada too. But these guys spend so much time, money and psychological energy that it just takes a while to get their head around it. Under the circumstances I thought he gave a relatively gracious and classy speech - unlike Todd Aiken, who gave one of the douche-ist concession speeches in the history of American politics. -- TV or Not TV .... The Smartest (TV) People! You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "TV or Not TV" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/tvornottv?hl=en
