SHORT TAKES ON THE DRIFTING WRECKAGE – AT 11:55 P.M. ET:

ELCTION DAY, AND NETWORKS SWEAT – FROM THE NEW YORK TIMES:  Fox News’s elections guru will play his cello on Tuesday morning, “to clear my head and get ready to do math.” CNN is staging more than a dozen rehearsals with a 25-person on-air team. George Stephanopoulos of ABC News spent his weekend running drills in a studio, practicing swing-state calls with a former intern standing in for the pollster Nate Silver.  But as television news gears up for 2016’s big finale, an intense public distrust in the media is threatening the networks’ traditional role as election night scorekeeper.  There is a divided electorate, big segments of which are poised to question the veracity of Tuesday’s results. Donald J. Trump has refused to say if he will concede in the event of a projected defeat. And new digital competitors plan to break the usual election-night rules and issue real-time predictions long before polls close.  The era of Tim Russert’s famed whiteboard — when network anchors could serve as the ultimate authority on election results — has faded. And scrutiny on big media organizations on Tuesday, when 70 million people might tune in, is likely to be harsher than ever.  News organizations have brought this on themselves.  There have been too many scandals, too many unethical practices, too much bias.  You reap what you sow.

AN EXAMPLE OF SCANDAL – FROM DAILY CALLER:   Democratic National Committee interim chairwoman Donna Brazile has already lost her contributor contract with CNN for leaking questions from a CNN town hall to the Clinton campaign. Monday night’s WikiLeaks release of emails from the personal account of Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta reveals Brazile sent even more questions ahead of the event, one that went to Hillary Clinton, the other was asked of Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders...When news broke that Brazile had leaked debate questions to the Clinton campaign, CNN President Jeff Zucker referred to the ethic breach by Brazile as “disgusting.”  Brazile, for her part, has never admitted wrongdoing, attacking the Russian government when asked about sending the questions.  This relates to the post just above.  CNN should have been far more public and aggressive about dealing with this scandal.  Instead, it simply made a few bland public statements.  It should have outlined to its audience what steps are being taken to be sure this doesn't happen again. 

AND THE WINNER IS – FROM THE NEW YORK POST:   It’s not just the presidency that’s at stake in the election — but also bragging rights for two prognosticators that are almost always right.  This year, one of them is absolutely certain Donald Trump will be living in the White House, while the other is just as sure that Hillary Clinton can’t lose.  Moody’s Analytics, which has picked the next president every year since 1980, says Clinton will make history as the first female chief executive, trouncing Trump with 332 electoral votes.  That runs in sharp contrast to a model created by Helmut Norpoth, a political-science professor at Stony Brook University, that’s predicting Trump will be running the country.  Norpoth is sticking by the results of his model — which has correctly predicted the winner of every presidential election since 1912, with the exception of 2000 — despite most polls showing Clinton ahead by at least 3 percentage points.  We should know within hours.  Maybe they'll both be right, with one candidate winning the popular vote, and the other the electoral vote.

November 7,  2016