Heading into last week’s midterm elections, Rachel Maddow didn’t have any insider knowledge or polling that differed from anyone else, but she definitely didn’t know the “blue wave” would be as big as it was. She definitely remembers the moment she realized it, though.
Appearing on “The Daily Show” on Monday night, the MS NOW host admitted that she, and most other pundits, all have the same cheat when preparing for election night coverage. It’s been that way for years.
“The way you cheat for preparing for midterm election nights, when there’s like hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of people on the ballot, is you don’t study everybody,” Maddow explained. “You only study the few dozen races that are going to flip, and that’s what everybody does.”
Maddow only processed how many states were going to flip blue when that typical cheat code stopped working, and she suddenly had no idea how to even pronounce some of the names of the people who were picking up seats.
“You don’t think you’re going to need to know the name of the cute gay guy in Indiana, in the Trump double-digit district, who loves cats, but that guy won in Indiana, and so you have to learn his name!” she said. “Like, in Wisconsin, I didn’t think I was going to need to learn about the awesome waitress and the ER nurse who were going to flip Republican districts, but all of a sudden we’re all cramming and studying in real time while we’re not taking commercial breaks, trying to learn how to pronounce the names of these people we haven’t studied.”
Maddow added that her focus was simply on, well, staying focused, making sure she heard the calls from the control room, and watching what she says on live television.
“I think it really wasn’t until I got off the air that I realized, like, ‘Oh, holy flip, Texas is blue,’” she marveled. “And Ohio, and there are Democrats going to Congress from Montana, and from Utah, and a cat guy won in Indiana! I mean, it’s amazing.”
