Cable news talking heads are in the business of stringing stock phrases together until it’s time for another Goldline ad, so much so that it doesn’t much matter what’s actually happened: The strategists and consultants on the news circuit will say more or less the same thing. Seth Meyers took that fact to its logical conclusion Tuesday night, taking advantage of his late-afternoon show time to pre-tape election analysis of Tuesday’s special election in Georgia (Republican Karen Handel defeated Democrat Jon Ossoff) before knowing who’d won.
With the help of “Democratic strategist Ben Holland,” Meyers examined the meaning of the election under the assumption Ossoff had won, then re-analyzed the outcome assuming Handel was the victor. First, Holland gives the maximal spin the Democratic Party would have used in victory:
Seth, it is not an overstatement to say that the political world was turned on its head tonight. We always thought this election was the epicenter of the current political moment, and we knew we would win it. Anything short of victory would have been a disappointment.
Then Holland offers the take that’s already being floated by pundits now that Handel’s won:
Seth, we always knew this was going to be a long shot. The fact that Jon Ossoff was even competitive is a major win for the Democratic party. I think the media and pundits placed way more attention on this election than those of us here on the ground.
It’s a great little flowchart of partisan political analysis in 2017, where the news is always good, the party is always winning, and policy outcomes matter not at all.
