Oh, Wolf, how I'll miss your calls...

With no primaries or caucuses until April 22, tonight presented the last opportunity for the next six weeks to see Wolf Blitzer "call" a state -- complete with his typical pattern of stammering, stalling and repeating himself, as well as his gratuitous overuse of the word "now," his self-referential commentary, his time-wasting restatements of obvious facts (Democratic primaries are proportional, superdelegates are party leaders, etc.), and his "questions" to CNN's other correspondents and analysts that aren't actually questions at all, but are in fact declarative sentences that again repeat facts that Blitzer has already reported two or three times. Wolfie, you're doing a heckuva job!

Nobody wastes as much time listening to himself talk -- while reporting "breaking news" -- as Wolf Blitzer. And oh, I do love it so.

By the way, with 77 percent of the precincts reporting, Obama leads 58% to 40%. And exit polls find that nearly half of the voters said she isn't honest and trustworthy. These are Democrats, remember.

Comments

[Joe Loy]

"Wolfie, you're doing a heckuva job!"

Hee hee! / but Wolfie thinks you're just jealous. Being a Diplomatic little fellow, all he will say on the record is "Salieri! Salieri!" but the subtext is, Too many Notes. :}

"...with 77 percent of the precincts reporting, Obama leads 58% to 40%."

Well The Green Papers currently show it at Obama 60.58%, Clinton 37.23%, Edwards 0.92%, others (combined, but absent any figures for ballot-listed candidate Write In [to whom I say, Right On] :) 1.26%.

Therefore we can now Project that (whoooosh! etc :) You have won the Loyboyz Miss'ippi Prediction Contest :), having virtually Nailed it at

Obama 59.8%

Clinton 38.8%

Edwards/Others 2.4%

which, in light of Shaun's sharp-eyed observation that [legendary NHS mathteacher] "Lou would be very disappointed in your math", we can now adjust to an almost Exactly correct Clinton 37.8% which We're Sure is what you meant anyway :> plus now it Sums to 100% which is 1/100th of a percent Better than TGP's actual bottomline.** Congratulations on your Uncannily accurate call. You whupped my Erse. Hello, Alasdair. :) [**See, "Too many Notes", above ;]

[dcl]

He is doing news on tv, he must assume the viewers are idiots, because a fair portion are and have no idea what's going on and how things work. Just because you understand something doesn't mean everyone else does. Christ, and I thought you went to journalism school... suppose not.

[Angrier and Angrier]

I watched this last night and noticed how he was going to say "double-digit lead" for Obama and then changed it to "significant." I am sure he was thinking about the phone call he was going to get from Harold Ickes if he had said double-digit.

These media types are a bunch of pussies who respond to the Clinton campaign's brow-beating.

As for Wolf's overall performance, I can understand the repetition, stuttering, etc, because he is essentially taking 30-seconds worth of information and stretching it over two or three hours. It is a real problem with cable "news." They beat the same piece of information to death because they have so much time to avoid reporting things like five U.S. troops getting killed in Baghdad or the lack of movement on dealing with the sub-prime mortgage crisis.

[Brendan Loy]

Dane, I can understand a succinct re-explanation of the superdelegate and proportional systems, but Wolf's rambling and confusing explication, given in a tone that suggests we ought to be surprised by this (like OMG! the Dems don't do it like the GOPs! who knew?) is misleading and not informative. And you'd think he would have figured out, by now, how to explain proportional delegate allocation without stuttering and stumbling over himself 50 times in the process.

Angrier, I actually assumed the opposite about the "double-digit" thing - I thought he was realizing that "double-digit" wasn't emphatic enough, that what he really meant was 15-20+ points, so he confused himself and settled on "significant." I could be wrong, though.

[B. Minich]

Wow - Angerier and I agree on something! Namely, the fact that cable news is trying to stretch 3 minutes worth of news over hours and hours.

While I disagree that they avoid Iraq casualties (I see reporting on that when I watch cable, that's for sure), even with that news included, it isn't that much. Even WITH Iraq and sub-prime crisis, that STILL isn't three hours of news (for example). Plus, this primary thing is a perfect example. Why are we watching? To discover who won certain primary contests, a fact that can be stated in 30 seconds when determined. However, they've got to fill tons of time before the results are in, and then, since they have everyone there, they have to KEEP talking for a while afterwards. In other words, they are focusing on news that can be summed up in 30 seconds or less, and talking about it for hours.