Salon has a grimly humorous collection (11/6/08, ad-viewing required) of idiocy intoned with supreme confidence by media pundits throughout the U.S. presidential campaign. Unsurprisingly, Fox News personalities are prominently represented.
From Bill Kristol looking forward at the very beginning of the campaign and getting it entirely wrong (Fox News Sunday, 12/17/06):
If [Hillary Clinton] gets a race against John Edwards and Barack Obama, she’s going to be the nominee. Gore is the only threat to her…. Barack Obama is not going to beat Hillary Clinton in a single democratic primary. I’ll predict that right now.
…to Carl Cameron misreading the political terrain the day before the election (Fox News, 11/3/08):
When you look at what’s happened in the polls in Ohio, Virginia, North Carolina and Florida–they believe that they’ve strengthened. Essentially, the conservative districts in those states are now secured. That they still have a little bit of work to do… to shore them up entirely. But most of the red states they think they’re now safe in…. In places like Pennsylvania, Ohio and Missouri, expect a late night. No quick calls tomorrow.
Read about the GOP advocates seeing their agenda through to the bitter end in FAIR’s new Action Alert: “Fox News Nailbiter!: Conservative Channel Pushed Notion of a Tightening Election” (11/5/08).
