The Press Box - The Inconclusive Election Night Pod

Episode Date: November 6, 2024

Hello, media consumers! Bryan and David react to an inconclusive election as results are still coming in. They discuss the current projections at the time of recording, as well as the different newscasts and election big boards. Hosts: Bryan Curtis and David Shoemaker Producer: Brian H. Waters Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

What's happening? It's Todd McShay and I'm back with a new home and a new show at the Ringer and Spotify. The McShay Show. It's a video and audio podcast coming to you year round with all my NFL draft information, big boards, mock drafts and player movement. Plus, I'll be chatting with some of my best friends in football, including some of your favorite football analysts. During the week, we'll have episodes on Tuesdays and Thursdays that'll include discussions about my player rankings, who's rising, who's falling, and who your NFL team should be keeping an eye on. Plus, we'll be reacting each week to the college football playoff polls and giving you previews and picks for each Saturday slate. In addition, I'll have episodes

on Saturday nights with my immediate reaction to the full day in college football every week. So if you love the college game, the NFL, the draft, or all of it like me, make sure to like, follow, subscribe, and get ready for the McShay show on the ringer, Spotify, and wherever you watch or listen to podcasts. Hello, media consumers. Welcome to an election night edition of the press box. Brian Curtis, David Shoemaker and producer Brian Waters here. David, we don't have a president,

but we have a lot of doomy signs for the Harris campaign as we record at 11 p.m. Eastern. But we do have a president. Oh, unless you're just going the full MAGA route of there's no one in the Oval office. Oh, my God. No one knows, no one knows where Joe Biden is. We're 30 seconds in it. I'm already stammering like Brian Williams on Amazon. Yeah. No, yes. Things, things look a little bit doomy now.

There's still a lot of votes to be counted. We're going to wait for the vote to come in. Oh, sorry. No, I was just reading the, I was just reading the closed captions on the TV screen that's behind me. There's a lot of votes that they're saying it again. Yeah, we've still got some time to go. We got some time to go. This is from Nate Cohn, one of the most trustworthy Nates in America on election night. He says for the first time tonight, we consider Trump likely to win the presidency. He has an advantage in each of Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin to win Harris would need to sweep all three. There is still a lot of vote left, but in the voting so far, Trump is narrowly but discernibly ahead.

So that's where we are. It's funny about election night, isn't it? Because if you remember 2020, there were like three to four. hours of Democratic pain, which I remember roughly lasting from about 8 p.m. Eastern to midnight Eastern. Yes. When everybody was convinced Biden was going to lose and then things began to turn around

and look more optimistic after midnight. And if you're reading media Twitter tonight, there was a lot of, but wait, but don't ignore the needle. It said Biden was going to lose. Yeah. It was bad. It was wrong. So that was the cope tonight. And obviously Harris is not lost yet, but I don't know that ignore the needle is necessarily the best medicine for what Harris is the thing.

Understand the purpose of the needle. Obviously, things look better for Trump now. I mean, I think this is this place that we've been for most of the past couple hours is that, you know, various people who should know things saying they would be online saying I'd rather be the Trump campaign than the Harris campaign right now. now. And yeah. And then, you know, there's still a lot of opportunity for that to change. I mean, it's true. Last year, last election cycle looked, if not really similar, like with a similar sort of probability situation at this point of the night. And we'll, we'll see where it goes. We'll see where it goes. When did I'd rather be blank than blank become the go-to phrase for election night? It's a little bit woegy, right?

It's a little bit of, it's a little, it's a nice little way to talk around the thing that you are not quite convicted enough or allowed to say out loud. Yes, which we know is key for both our election predictors and then anybody who's on network news today. Weird night for network news, I got to say, we started out with Georgia, North Carolina. These were essentially Harris's escape hatches. And if she was doing well in the sunbelt, there was a theory, well, maybe she's going to do really well in the sunbelt. and then she'll go and win the blue wall and this won't actually be close tonight. She didn't do super well.

Those results are still rolling in, but were at best mixed for her. Then we began to get a little bit of the blue wall results starting with Pennsylvania, then the rest of the Midwest. And then the night, emotionally again, for our friends on media Twitter, kind of flatlined.

Yeah. And it started to be like, wait, is there any good news for Kamala Harris out there? I think I saw our listener, Nick Field, actually tweet that. Because I don't know what you were watching, but the calls for blue states, and I'm not saying this is a media conspiracy, I'm just saying this is what the decision does we're going with, were really slow tonight.

Yeah. Like, it took Illinois a while to get in the wind column for Harris. Mm-hmm. Virginia still not there when we started this podcast, and maybe it slipped in there in the last couple of minutes. Yeah. it has been a very rough night. Yeah, there were some bellwether areas of Virginia that didn't seem to to bode really well for the Harris campaign.

I mean, who knows? Obviously, every state, every place, you know, tallies their votes at different speeds. We've learned that the hard way over the past few election cycles. And, yeah, I mean, I think that there was, we talked about this in the last show, that the sort of, the, the, the, the, the up. beat liberal moment that we were having felt in some ways as contrived as the hand-wringing that preceded it. I think there was just a lot of high expectations coming into today. And those have not been borne out.

Those articles, and we talked about them on Sunday night show, just felt like they were built on vibes or theories of the case that didn't have a lot of data behind them. Yeah. You know, this idea that pollsters were wildly undercounting Harris because they're afraid of being wrong about Trump for a third straight cycle. Or that the vibes, the way Harris was finishing would have a discernible impact on the race in terms of actual votes getting banked. Which again, maybe it maybe it did on the margins. But, but again, at this point in the evening and it is early where David and I are not calling the race, we are we are not a. to be a decision desk here at the ringer,

but has not been borne out by early data. Maybe that should be our pitch for the next cycle. We'll be the decision desk. Full decision desk. How many people do we need to hire? Three, four?

I don't know. We get a lot of data people here at the ringer. Can Danny Kelly do election stats? I don't see why not. I don't see why not. Get cram in here. You're hired. You're the new Cornacki.

Yeah. No, I mean, we can this might be a neat segue into discussing the broadcast because amazon's been doing a pretty fair job of of just sort of you know i wouldn't say minimal staffing by looking at them but they're obviously don't have their own prognosticators and and shot and state callers on staff and they're getting it done weirdest broadcast i mean have you been i wad turned over and brian williams was reading his phone and talking about what steve cornetki was saying on MSNBC.

Mm-hmm. And Brian Williams also, I know it's been a while since he's been in the big chair, but that was a strange, halting performance from him, at least the parts of the telecast that I watched or the streaming cast that I watched, where he seemed like he was hosting a new show for the very first time. Go on. Well, part of it was that he just kind of kind of fumbling his words, but I couldn't tell if the everything was disorganized like in the from the production standpoint so he was because

he seemed to be trying to listen in his ear and again you're putting together you know something completely from scratch this is the first time Amazon has a newscast of any kind on election night so he didn't seem to know where to go at one point he sort of walked over to the desk he was sitting alone he walked over to the desk where six analysts were yes Love the layout. Yeah, yeah. That was kind of the best part where he just, first of all,

he, at various times, I don't know if the background was changing, but he seemed to be sitting in front of like a lake. And it was surrounded by an open field. And they had this enormous screen, but I give them in all seriousness. Kudos to the screen size.

But yeah, and then he was just going to, you kind of, when they zoom out, you realize they're in this just like gigantic, just futuristic, room, but he's sitting all by himself and all the other people are just sitting together at a desk like 20 feet away. And then there's a separate setup with like a couch, uh, that's like further on.

Yeah, I mean, listen, I think that I'm going to have a slightly differing opinion. I don't think, I do think, obviously there is some production, you know, they're feeling their way through this. There's a hiccup or two. But I don't think what you're saying is Brian Williams, being uncomfortable. I think what you're seeing is what Brian Williams had already evolved into by the end of his run

in the 11th hour. He was basically just doing a late night show and there was a lot of, there is not a lot of formality to it except for like the vocabulary that you're sort of accustomed to watching MSNBC.

And I think he might have, he might be more relaxed with after some time off than, you know, normal. And some of that's coming through. But I do, but I think Brian Williams is pretty much on Brian Williams right now.

I think he's, I think he's doing himself. And I, there, there is a, there is a certain charm to it. I just remember it being a little smoother on the 11th hour. Yeah, well, maybe that's just the production, you know, everybody's comfortable. Everybody's used to what they're doing there every night. But, but, but yeah, he was always, I feel like he was always a little bit like morphing into a sort of lounge singer and in his, in his old age. Um, and you know, like I said, there's a, there's a certain sort of familiarity to it.

I mean, he's one of the greatest things he's, he's, he's ever had going for him is that he just feels like an anchor, you know, he is these. Yeah. Hair still looks good. Yeah. And, and still looks crisp. Yeah. Um, and this is definitely, I mean, it's, it's, it's, it's funny. Like we, we, we, we look at this stuff for a living or you do at least.

And it's, it's, it does feel like incredibly bizarre and different. And yet when you try to like make notes about it, you're like, actually this is kind of exactly like all the other shows. You know? Yes. I mean, he had James Carvel on the set. And I couldn't tell if James Carvel was sad or just low energy. Yes. I think that's, that's also kind of what James Carville has morphed into over the past 10 years.

But go on. A great character, but maybe not somebody you want on the desk on election night, just in, terms of popping on TV. There are a lot of familiar faces, like people that you don't necessarily miss. I was going to say people you didn't realize you missed, but it's just like, you know, to what degree are you just like, oh, Mike Murphy. I haven't seen him on one of the other networks in a minute, you know, like it. And there's obviously a lot of people who have been on other networks very recently,

popping up on there. I did. I mean, there's a lot to say. I mean, you could say positive things about the broadcast, you know? I mean, Baratunde Thurston, I thought was incredibly good and should hopefully get, you know, he should be on my TV every day, although I'm guessing that probably wouldn't be his dream job. Did you, did you have a preference in the, in the, um, the, what are we calling the big screen, like the Coronacchi screen versus the John King, big board?

Yeah, the big boy, the various big borders. There was King, Kornacki, Aaron McPyke was doing it on Amazon, and forgive me, I don't know the dude on Fox News, but I did watch him talk for a while to try to form an opinion. Yeah. I think Kornacki is still the best. That may be the Normie opinion, but like watching him versus John King, I just felt there was a little more detail there. I agree. I think this is my favorite John King performance because I think he, I feel like I'm, I'm, I'm getting old because I'm only talking people's age.

He has aged into sort of the perfect version of John King where you're just, he's, he's, you know, I was going to say grandfather, but it's, he's like your dad is like showing you how to use his, like a new iPad pro or something. And you're just like, yeah, this is a, he, he knows exactly how this works. This is really incredible. And I think, I think to overall tonight I was drawn to the lower energy. And I don't mean that as a negative. to the more peaceful voices on the air, Thurston and King and there are a couple others.

Even Jake Tapper as the lead, you know, just a little bit more downbeat. It felt more, not in a negative way. It felt more, it just, when you're watching five screens at once, I think just the people who were just playing it cool caught my attention a little bit more. But you're right, Koranaki is not just amazing at what he does, but is just a kind of unbelievable performer. it's he'll talk for like like seven minutes straight like like literally three times the amount that anybody else will be in the position of talking and then he like sticks the landing that's the

strangest thing because there's a point where you're just like oh he there he's just going to go until somebody just like brings out the vaudeville hook and pulls him off stage or whatever and then and then he'll just be like it put a perfect bow on it it'll just be like and that's what we're looking for in Georgia, back to you. You know, and you're just like, wait, what? No, it was a strange. It's, it's, it's very, very high level stuff.

Did you notice that they would have a little graphic on the bottom of the screen that would say we have a call to make? And yet he would just still be going. Yeah. And I wanted to hear the producer in his ear. Are we just like how far ahead of him? Because he can't just cut it off, right? If you're in the Lachawan County numbers. Yeah.

You can't just stop midstream. But it felt like the graphic would go up and they would actually have a state to deliver. And then he would just go on for like another two or three minutes doing his thing. It's a truly amazing performance. I did, by the way, like the screen, you mentioned at Amazon in the background. It reminded me of when you would watch a rerun of Johnny Carson on YouTube. And you realize his backdrop was just like Lake Tahoe for several seasons of the show. It wasn't like the glittering L.A.

skyline. Then you're like, oh, that was weird. Never remember that as a as a kid. By the way, we have some news here. Sherrod Brown, Democratic Senator from Ohio has lost. Bernie Moreno is your new senator from

Ohio. That also effectively ends Democratic control of the Senate. Though again, we're talking early here in the evening. And that could, I guess could change, though. I think that probably guarantees that. A couple moments from election night I wanted to run by you.

Mark Robinson went down early in North Carolina. I should probably watch my wording here. Mark Robinson lost early in North Carolina. The recipient of some amazing journalism from CNN about his online habits. He will not be the next governor of North Carolina. The pronunciation of DeKalb County

in Georgia, which is spelled like DeKalb. Yeah. Did you feel like a real election professional because you could turn to your wife halfway through the night and say, oh, did you see the returns from DeKalb? That made an impression on me.

Abby Huntsman playing the lightly conservative antagonist on the Amazon broadcast, who was kind of a host, but kind of was just kind of winding up the other participants on the panel. Yeah. Especially the anti-Trump types like Carville and Mike Murphy. Mm-hmm.

I thought that was a little weird. Also some new election night language, which I did not remember from previous broadcast. So you have the poll closings. And usually we get big graphics and, you know, this is on the hour or the half hour and then Tapper or Rachel Maddow worms up the pipes. And here we go. We have some important announcements to make. And it's either the most obvious results you can imagine or it's an interesting. inconclusive result.

But Rachel Maddow said this a few times. NBC News can project that it is too early to call. Yeah, what was that? That does not make any sense. We're saying we can project that it is too early to project. You would just say it is too early to make a call. You're not actually projecting anything in that thought. Right.

Wouldn't you just say NBC News has decided that is too early? I mean, there's got to be some other way to say that. You were conclusively saying that it is too early to make a call. Yeah, it felt like they were responding to other people who may have already made the call, but even in that case, it would have been helpful for them to be clearer. I really hope that you were going to come in here and explain that verbiage to me. I really have no idea. That was so perplexing.

I don't know. I feel like post-2000 we got into a real delicate dance of too early to call and too close to call and suddenly that has just taken over election night vocabulary so much and no longer makes sense.

What else do I have here? Reader wanted us to actually go into the Red One reviews. If you listen to Sunday night show, you heard the studio that made the upcoming rock movie Red One lifted the embargo on their reviews. on election night.

Yes. To maybe slip these under the wire. Can I read you some of the early Red One reviews that I found? This is from Jonathan Sim. Red One is one of the most ridiculous Christmas movies I've ever seen. Occasionally enjoyable, but Jake Caston directs this outrageous premise like a very serious action thriller,

only ever pausing to have Chris Evans' character scream what is happening every few minutes. Mind-numbing stupidity, absurdly expensive, and somehow cheap-looking at times. hashtag red one movie I'm not sure how many people will be focusing on that but the red one movie reviews

are live if you want an alternate topic to ponder here on election night that is not the election anything you noticed David from TV tonight that was outside the general doominess for the Democrats no not really we're recording this right as

John Stewart's taking the air, so I'll be interested to have thoughts on his live telecast as well. You know, unfortunately, it's part of the job. We can't be live streaming that. I just signed up for another year, so that looks fortuitous now if Donald Trump becomes a president again. Yeah. There's just a, it's just a, we're just in the math weeds just straight away. I feel like you were saying, now we're too, we're too comfortable with the big boards. too comfortable with the granular nature of this whole thing. And so it's like, you know, halfway feels like one of those college nightmares where you're just like, you have when you're 35 where you're like showing up for a math test and everybody just

understands this shit and you don't remember ever having gone to class. They're just getting really granular really quickly. I would let this hit. I'm really glad you said. I can I just interrupt for saying. I'm really glad you said that because I did feel at times tonight like I was listening to a really good football podcast that I did not totally understand when they're at the big board. You know how a lot of sports podcasts have got like that? The people are just running through the math and you're just like, I'm getting smarter even if I don't totally know what they're talking about. Piosmosis. Yeah, it's true. I mean, Kornacki used to be charming, used to be like the charming outlier. And now that that's just everything's been

cornakiized in the way that these things are presented. I think that's probably for the better. I think I could use a little more storyline maybe between the trips to the big board. Yeah. I mean, I think it's tough when you have so much time to fill. And like right now, it seems like the campaigns are, you know, word from the campaign is either silence or spinning, you know. It looks like there, somebody reported that Trump may be leaving Marilago to rival at his victory party in the not too distant future. Now knowing how Trump operates, that could mean, you know, in the next like two and a half hours or something like that. But, like, obviously that'll be something to keep an eye on.

My guess is that he'll be declaring victory tonight either way. And, you know, that will set the stage. I mean, that's sort of, I think the part of what's more downbeat than just about anything from the liberal side is that this is going to be a protracted mess. Even in the face, even if it's somehow Harris eeks out of victory. and you know I think everybody kind of had their hearts in mind set on an imaginary landslide but yeah I saw somebody I wanted to be going back to that previous point somebody made a dumb tweet that people were making fun of about oh we remember back in the days when they would just tell you who the president was by like nine o'clock at night and we could all go to bed knowing and I don't

really know what they're referring to particularly. Maybe there's a specific point in time that they could pinpoint that all the things made, you know, were conveyed. I mean, obviously, like, you know, for most American history, we were waiting for the newspaper and not finding out on cable news broadcast at 10 p.m. or something. But I would love someone to do just like an actual timeline of how we learned of every every election result over the past 200 years. There was a tweet to that effect tonight.

You know, Hillary, people forget, Hillary conceded on election night in 2016. I think it was after midnight, so it would technically count that as election night or not? But, you know, we knew when we went to bed on the West Coast that night that Donald Trump was going to be the president. Obviously, that took quite a bit longer with Biden. part of the problem is in the last or part of the problem, I guess, at least theoretically,

is you have one candidate running right now who is never going to concede. Yeah. So he's not going to help with the timeline. He's never going to be like, well, that's it. I lost. Let me go ahead and give a call and give this over with. Yeah. That is actually never going to happen as long as Donald Trump is running for president.

So I don't know what that is. I mean, we've had blowout elections where we've known on the night of, but this is. I don't understand. What are people supposed to do? Make the, make the election less close? I don't know what, what is the,

what is the idea here? I think that the implication for a lot of people was that our elections are corrupt and this is somehow some sort of like tail wagging evidence of that.

I'm not exactly sure. Which is always a Donald Trump theory. Like I was ahead and then the votes came in and I wasn't ahead anymore. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So much for that.

I'm looking at the needle right now still 89% chance of victory projecting Donald Trump to get 300 electoral or 299 electoral votes right now before we go and we'll have much more to say about this later this week when we do have a result

I do want to ask you this if Donald Trump does pull this out this has been on my mind what do you think resistance 2.0 is going to look like. I mean, I think that the movement needs to get more organized. I think resistance, whatever you define it.

I mean, the resistance movement has to embark upon the same journey that conservatives embarked upon 20, 30 years ago. And they started drawing the line towards stacking the Supreme Court, right? I mean, that's just the direction that it's going. And I think that obviously with the new Trump administration from an, speaking again about a different form of organization, I think that the, that resistance is going to be. I mean, functional resistance

that Donald Trump is going to take place in the courts and it's going to take place, you know, uh, and, you know,

well, I mean, and also in, I think that there will be probably more pointed investigative journalism and both from under official banners and,

you know, citizen journalism as well. Um, but it'll be interesting because I think there will be a lot of like really disheartened people. I think it'll take a while to take form and

kind of take stock. And I think obviously before long, you'll be very quickly looking at the next election cycle in two years. You know, I mean, in terms of house races and everything else.

So, I mean, it's a really good question. I don't think it's going to be though, like a, I think it will be tough for the going for the Democratic Party for a while. I think that if Trump is reelected,

I think that a lot of the recriminate, I mean, there'll be recriminations in a million different directions. I think a lot of it is going to come down to the fact that the Democrats have become the party of, of, of, um,

of fixed primaries, honestly. I mean, I say like, you know, there hasn't there had, I think to, I mean,

to hear my teenager talk about it. That's, that's the way that he and his friends, discuss those things. There wasn't a primary that Kamala Harris had to win in order to become the nominee this time around? No. And even teenagers now point back to Bernie Sanders getting screwed by Hillary Clinton. Sort of the last real primary the Democrats had is when Obama got the first nomination, right?

And even prior to Biden dropping out, just the complete lack of anybody running against him. And, you know, I mean, just the way that they treated RFK Jr. I think was totally justified, but it's a talking point, you know, and I mean, all that kind of stuff. For certain people, sure. And yeah, I think that, I think that that's that, that for that reason and for many others, I think resistance Twitter, what, I don't even know how you frame the question, but I think the resistance movement might be pushing, you know, even at odds to the, to the institutional

Democrats, even if they're fighting for nominally the same thing. Yeah. I mean, it's interesting because when you have a party that suffers a loss like this, you talk about organization. I mean, one of the things is sometimes, you know, there is, it's not possible to have organization because, first of all, you have lots of people that want to be the solution to the problem. And then you have lots of people that are going to point at different culprits to the

problem. Yeah. Multiple, many, I should say many, many of whom can actually have. been guilty, right? Joe Biden is certainly going to be, if Harris loses, Joe Biden is certainly going to be on that list for insisting on running and for taking a long time to drop out and for preventing there from being, effectively preventing there from being a primary to choose his successor on the Democratic ticket. You're going to have people that question Harris's strategy, the Liz Cheney part of it, you know, the, you know, trying to pick off Republicans, that kind of

stuff like there will be a whole big list. and then a whole bunch of people who are extremely ambitious who are ready to say, I am the solution, right? I, Josh Shapiro, I, Gretchen Whitmer, I, Pete Buttigieg, I am the person who can lead us out of this mess. And again, how does that process even begin to be organized? Because who running the Democratic Party, quote, unquote, would anybody try? us to pick, you know, to pick who gets to answer that question.

Yep. So it's going to be a real scramble. You know, there's a lot of, you know, remember all the, the soon to be forgotten plot it's for, to use an only in journalism word for Nancy Pelosi. Oh, she got stuff done. She got Joe Biden off the ticket. Well, is she going to be a power broker going forward? It seems pretty unlikely.

But who will be? I mean, that is, that is going to be a, fascinating, fascinating thing to talk about and write about over the next two to four years again, if this goes the way it looks like it's going right now. Yeah.

All right. I think we've said what we can say, David. You don't want to make a call? You don't want to make your official? I couldn't get Danny Kelly on the horn, so we're going to leave this like Brian Williams and Amazon to other decision desks. I can report

to you what's happening on CNN right now. to do that. That would be the Amazon way to go here. John King is pointing at Michigan counties with Jake Tapper standing next to him. Breaking news. Trump's got 211. If you're one of these, if you were John King or Jake Tapper, you wear a suit to work every day. Do you think they had their election night suit picked out like two weeks in advance? Yes. I think you knew. I don't think you just showed up in the closet today. I was like, damn it. Forgot to take this one of the cleaners. Yeah. Do you think it was just like, this is my best suit? This is the

best look for this night. And so I'm just going to leave it over here, hanging on the bathroom door or on my dressing room door, untouched, just to make sure it's ready for election night. Did you hang in the bathroom when you were taking a shower just to get those last few wrinkles out? No, yeah. And they got people

who do that for them, right? Jake Tapper's also wearing a vest tonight under the sports code. Yeah. So is that what you go for election night? I don't, I can't say I have Jake Tapper's entire sartorial catalog at my memory, but that seems like an election. The vest is a good look for when you're constantly getting up and down. You got to be in different positions and stuff. I think it's a, it's a smart move. Is this like a football announcers where

you avoid the color tie of the team whose game your callings? Do you not want to do red or blue tonight? Do you want to go to something else? Oh my God. How great would it have been if somebody just showed it, just whoever sitting next to James Carville on the, on the, on the, is on stage. It just showed up in just an even gaudier LSU. Color color pattern or color way just didn't mess with them. Throwback LSU jersey today. Yeah. Who's the bigger tiger fan, James? You lost twice tonight.

All right. He is David Shoemaker. I am Brian Curtis. Braxton Magic by Brian Waters. We got a bunch more for you this week. Sorry to be inconclusive, but the nation is inconclusive. of Shoemaker and I and others will return with more lukewarm takes about the media. See you then, David.

See you later, Brian.