Day 24: November 3

1 day to Election Day

The final show of the campaign season opens with the news that Obama's grandmother has died, and a clip of Obama briefly talking about it in North Carolina. It then swings to the final polls before the election: Obama leads in almost all demographics other than evangelicals, the elderly, and whites; he also leads in a measure of supporter enthusiasm and in all of the most important swing states. Howard Fineman joins the show once again, and is asked whether McCain should be finishing his campaign with a claim that Obama opposes coal, what the political impact of Obama's grandmother's death is, what it says that Obama has only been in red states for the past week, and whether Republicans claiming that it won't take a "miracle" for McCain to win have different polling numbers or are just wrong. This is a mixture of interpretive journalism and game schema -- the discussion of polls, and Fineman refers to McCain's coal claim as "small-ball." There's also a moment of partisan bias when Olbermann finishes the segment by saying that he's "still worried" that McCain might win.

The next segment, in which Nate Silver analyzes the last polls, is nearly pure horse race, with a little speculation mixed in. Olbermann asks him whether McCain has a chance to win, what early indicators of the outcome will be, whether there's anything in the fivethirtyeight.com model to account for candidates' ground games or the historic nature of the election (as in, will people come out just to be able to say they voted in 2008), whether exit polls are even remotely useful, and if weather will be a factor. There are several baseball references as well.

Next is a discussion of the early vote margins (heavily in favor of Obama), and by extension the campaign's "ground game." Chris Kofinis appears here, and Olbermann asks how far above average the Obama ground game is, whether empty McCain offices are indicative of volunteers giving up en masse, if there's any legitimate explanation for a McCain win other than "fraud at polls" (Olbermann says here that he's quoting Citizen Kane), and whether Obama owes a debt of gratitude to Hillary Clinton for giving his "ground army," as Kofinis refers to it, a dry run of sorts. This is one part interpretation, one part game schema.

The next subject is "a weekend of comedy." McCain made a last-second appearance on Saturday Night Live before the election, and Olbermann himself was the subject of a skit (played by Ben Affleck). Also, a Quebecois comedy team pranked Sarah Palin, convincing her that she was speaking to French president Nicolas Sarkozy. Eugene Robinson joins the show to talk about the political comedy. Olbermann asks how it's possible that Palin's staff let the prank call through, how the McCain campaign can afford to spend time talking about the Olbermann skit (and whether Robinson was disappointed he wasn't in it), why Palin's handlers lied about a deleted line from her last appearance, and how important the SNL appearances really are. This is primarily an example of interpretive journalism.

"Worst Persons" shows an unusually non-partisan feather today, with honorees including Bill O'Reilly and Bill Cunningham -- more usual suspects -- but also Shirley Neagle, who put out a sign on Halloween saying that children of supporters of one presidential candidate (who Olbermann does not name) would not receive candy. Olbermann says that it doesn't matter what candidate it was, she was "a jerk to children" and should be scorned. Though the first two were Republicans, the lack of identification of the third was a refreshing change.

The final Campaign Comment is a fiction: what would be happening now if all of the mistakes, blunders and gaffes that John McCain has committed were, instead, Barack Obama's? The answer, Olbermann says, is that Obama "would have long since ceased to be taken seriously by any measurable part of the voting public, as a viable, responsible, self-aware, mentally vigorous, non-dangerous, non-risk." This is essentially a plea with America to vote for Barack Obama, and it's a fittingly politically biased end to the period of analysis.