I watched both CNN and FNC, but after the numbers started coming in I started watching mostly CNN. The reason I did this was while I really like Hume, Michael Barone was doing the updating of the numbers and all he was offering was the totals. At one point Hume mentioned that it was hard to say what areas were reporting in, and what their demos looked like. Shortly after that I switched to CNN, and they had a nifty map display of each district, what the status of each district was, and they discussed what the impacts of votes were likely to be based on demographics.

CNN was providing much more and better information than FNC, so I stayed on CNN most of the night.

During the primaries within each party, you're dealing with party-bred people who largely think alike. The purpose of the primaries, after all, is for the parties to put forward "their" candidate. If you examine Hillary's and Obama's voting record, they're almost identical. Now obviously, you fight about differences, not about similarities. They're not going to fight about ideology, so their fight is going to be about things more fun to fight about: namely, demographics and personality.

• In the Democrat race, the fight is more clear because the demographics and personality are sufficiently different. The surprising thing about the Hillary-Obama race is that the race demographic is split down the middle, and the gender demographic is similarly split. However, the big demographic split is about age. People under thirty are flocking to Obama, while the over-30 crowd is sticking with Hillary. Even so, all those demographics are in play, and that makes for a fun fight.
• On the GOP side, they also all share the same ideology. But unlike the Democrats, they're all the same basic white guys.

However, we're only in the primaries. The ideology within the parties is identical, so they don't fight about that. Once we get to the general election, however, the ideologies come front and center. Personality is still important, but the fight becomes much more about ideology.

I still think conservatism is (by far) a stronger argument. The weakness in the GOP is that they haven't lived up to their conservatism. Still, in a straight fight between liberalism and conservatism, conservatives should win.

But as Chris Berman says, "... that's why they play the game."

Love the Linda Lovelace note.  Oh, yes, we know how journalists come up with names now!!! 

Had a big thing for Pat Benatar in high school, riveted to the TV when one of her videos would come on, even that great pile of hilarity know as "Love is a Battlefield."

I understand a spokesman for Fox just announced that the ratings loss to CNN occurring on the birthday of Linda Lovelace made it particularly hard to swallow.

Jer

Geez, what happened to the 600,000 or more we heard about over 1 1/2 years ago!  Guess the EXIT THIS LIFE polling was off!!  Some thought they were dead, but really weren't! 

Between March of 2003 and June of 2006, the WHO and the Iraqi government estimate that 151,000 Iraqis have died.  Why does a rock band like the WHO have statistics on Iraqi deaths?  And further why should we care what a defunct rock band thinks.

Nuke em til they glow then shoot em in the dark.