Frank Rich: What We’d Really Like to Know

Here’s what we know in the early going. Everyone on television – and certainly anyone who looks at the Internet – knows that the exit polls look very good for Democrats in Senate races. But we’re not allowed to say that because we all know what happened with exit polls in 2004.

So we must congratulate those networks that stepped into the gap and trumpeted with graphics their fearless position that Lugar, unopposed, has been reelected in Indiana.

Otherwise, as I watch cable TV and float on the sea of bloviation, I hope others are sharing my delight in the reemergence of William Bennett as a pundit on CNN. He seems to know little about the specifics of his races, repeats G.O.P. talking points without even bothering to dress them up with some of those literary references that have marked his “serious” and “scholarly” works. But why doesn’t Wolf or Lou or someone ask him what we really want to know: Which bets did he place on which candidates, what were the spreads, what was the over-under? Here is a great journalistic resource for CNN and no one is taking advantage of it. This explains in part why its ratings cannot catch up with Fox.