While CBS, the network of Murrow, Cronkite, and Rather has degenerated into the Katie Couric Show, Dan Rather will get a shot at covering the elections with the best this year. Many times Jon Stewert has out performed the real journalists. Tonight Dan Rather will be joining Stewert and Stephen Colbert at Comedy Central:
This is not a joke.
Dan Rather will analyze election results with Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert tonight at 11 on Comedy Central’s live, hour-long Indecision 2006 special.
“It’s a risk, I guess, but what the hell,” says Rather, who covered every national election since 1962 for CBS before being drop-kicked in June. Now he’s global correspondent for Mark Cuban’s HDNet.
“J. Stewart and company offered the chance, and I’ve taken it,” Rather, 75, says. “I don’t do comedy, I do politics, which sometimes is one and the same.
“Certainly, one can’t cover politics and not have a sense of humor about it. Let’s face it, politics is often a theater of the absurd.”
Equally absurd are the corny “Ratherisms” he dragged out during many election-night marathons.
Among our faves: “If a frog had side pockets, he’d carry a handgun.” And: “This race is tight like a too-small bathing suit on a too-long ride home from the beach.”
Don’t look for such classic nuggets on tonight’s Midterm Midtacular, Rather says. (Color us disappointed.)
“Don’t expect many Ratherisms, if any. If any occur to me, I may use it, but I intend to be myself, report a bit, and have them take it from there. I’m told I will be expected to ‘play it straight,’ and then they’ll bounce off it. We’ll see.”
Rather has never been a guest of The Daily Show or Colbert Report, but he’s grateful to them for giving him a platform from which to keep his 44-year string of election coverage going.
“I’m hoping this old wreck of an anchorman and political reporter may yet have some wee something to contribute,” he says.
Rumor has it Granholm will stay Michigan’s gov? 😉
McCaskill / Talent race (and stem cell amendment) still neck-and-neck, watching the precinct reports as they come in on the Secretary of State’s site. It’s a nail-biter. Always knew it would be. Either way, we’re taking this state back. Now, or in two more years.
Somewhere in the piles of paper around here is a list of Ratherisms I scribbled down on election night 1992. Now that was a giddy night.
In the rural red county we just moved away from, McCaskill lost to Talent by only 540 votes. Want to know how good a showing that is? In that county only two years ago, twice as many people voted for Bush as for Kerry. That big a turn-around for the Democrats is huge. Huge. Talent even made a stop there last week. I gotta send my friends there some flowers. Flowers and beer. They really done good.
First time I’ve smiled thinking about that county since we left.
By the time I was driving home from the office the local NPR station was predicting Graholm would win with around 58%. I’ve had no doubt she would win big since she blew DeVos out in the debates.
Hopefully McCaskill will pull it out as, unless Ford makes a big comeback and everything else goes perfectly, we’ll need her to win to take the Senate. Of course between recounts and the possibility of someone switching parties we won’t know for sure who controls the Senate for a while.
Regardless of what happens, there are many areas where the Republican had a lock in the past which are now competitive. In 2004 the battleground beyond key states like Florida and Ohio was largely in blue states with Democrats fighting to hang on to them. In 2006 the battlegrounds are in Republican seats, and in 2008 some of the red states will likely be battleground states. Plus a whole new batch of Republican Senators will be up for reelection.
182 of 186 Kansas City Precincts Reporting
Talent: 20,850
McCaskill: 71,712
190 of 203 St. Louis City Precicts Reporting
Talent: 16,913
McCaskill: 68,869
3149 of 3746 State Precincts Reporting
Talent: 834,744 47.7%
McCaskill: 858,109 49.0%
Wishing Webb and McCaskill a steady rise. 😉
Things are looking really good for the Democrats to squeak by in all three outstanding races.
It looks like we can “thank” the Green Party for mucking things up again as in 2000, especially if Webb should wind up not winning. Assuming the majority of Green voters would vote for Webb in a two way race, without the Greeen Party Webb would be winning by a comfortable margin, and would likey win by enough to avoid an automatic recount. Granted Webb is far more conservative than the ideal candidate of Green voters, but the real issue isn’t Webb but who controlls the Senate. Hopefully the Greens are over their delusion that there isn’t any difference between the parties.
McCaskill won the state, and only lost in my county by 369 votes. Missouri, I’m proud of ya, honey.
Sending good energy Webb and Virginia’s way.
Hard work = miracles. {{{America}}}
I’m so relieved right now, that Claire McCaskill won, that the Missouri Constitutional amendment to allow stem cell research passed (by a very close margin!) that I’m just almost, nearly, speechless. Think we’re going to head to the lake for a day or two for the first vacation we’ve had in several years. I remember sitting on the dock the weekend after 9/11, similiar time of year, similar weather, similar state of shock. Not quite the same state of shock of course, but shock all the same. Hope. Can’t. Beat. Hope. LOVE HOPE. We have hope.
Ron,
Where the blazes are you? !!! LOL
Quit working at your real job and start blogging!
KJ and Ron,
Congratulations to both of you and your big wins in MO and MI!
We all done real good. 🙂
Dave! Buddy! Old Pal of Mine! 😉
We all did done real good, didn’t we. Grinning like the Cheshire Cat. Gotta love Americans when they get ticked off at their government. We slay dragons when we get like that. Dragons have been slayed. It is good. It is very, very good.