Chuck Todd Lies On National Television

So I'm watching Countdown, and Olbermann brings up the delegate math in the wake of Barack Obama's victory in Mississippi. He teases a discussion with Chuck Todd about "changes in the delegates in Texas, one week after the voting, and changes in the delegates in California, one MONTH later!"

So I think to myself, "Self, are you about to be mentioned on Countdown?" Because, as has been well-documented, it was changes originated on this website that led to the national media meekly changing their delegate totals to reflect reality.

So Chuck Todd comes on the show, and Olbermann asks him about California, and Todd hems and haws about there being "a lot of absentee and provisional ballots counted late" in the state, which is true, and about how some 3-1 delegate splits in various districts changed to 2-2, which is also true. Then he said, "and so when all the votes came in, it turns out Obama netted four delegates out of these districts in the last week." (rough transcript)

Yeah, that's actually kind of a lie. There has been no movement in the delegate count since CA-53 flipped to Obama on February 15. Most of the delegate changes happened very early. MSNBC just turned away from the counting, neglected to pay attention, and now makes the demonstrably false statement that Obama netted delegates "in the last week."

What actually happened was that my post about the real delegate counts got picked up by the Wall Street Journal and shamed the entire national media into getting it right. But I guess that wouldn't sound too good on Countdown.

It'll sound good in my email to Keith.