At 10:24pmET Fox News Channel called the Virgin Islands for Sen. Barack Obama. “A clean sweep,” said Bret Baier making the decision desk calls as Geraldo Rivera anchors coverage. Obama had already won the Washington and Nebraska caucuses and minutes earlier, all around 10:07pm, FNC, MSNBC and CNN called the Louisiana primary for Obama.
Norah O’Donnell is anchoring prime time coverage on MSNBC. The network, which bills itself as The Place for Politics, has been airing a mix of politics and documentaries today. They’ve even swapped out previously scheduled docs with politically themed long-form programming. At 7pmET “Deadly Encounter” was replaced with the Hillary Clinton “Headliners and Legends.” (Which led some TVNewser emailers to ask “Are they’re trying to make up to the Clinton camp?”)
• HuffPo’s Rachel Sklar has more on the MSNBC mix.
Over on CNN, no night off for The Best Political Team on Television (or hadn’t you heard?). Blitzer’s making the calls, King’s working the Magic Wall and prior to the Louisiana call, Campbell Brown was moderating a discussion with John King, Gloria Borger and Jeffrey Toobin about Sen. Obama and the black vote. Here’s a portion that jumped out at one TVNewser reader:
Jeffrey Toobin: “…to ghetto-ize his candidacy as sort of one that is just dominated by black voters is just not right, as tonight itself illustrates.
John King: “…but in the bigger primary states, those are caucuses. I’m not trying to ghetto-ize him at all. He’s doing something quite remarkable but in the bigger primary states where you have competitive battles, if he can build a share of the white vote he’d be in better standing.”
It’s 11:09. Obama has just wrapped up his speech. The race for the Democratic nomination is as close as it’s ever been. And the cable nets are covering it all. Saturday night’s all right, all right.