Rachel Maddow talks election results with Stephen Colbert

By Meredith Blake

Nov. 9, 2012 12 AM PT

It’s been a long, exhausting campaign season for political pundits, and on Thursday a tired but clearly exhilarated Rachel Maddow stopped by “The Colbert Report” to discuss the results of Tuesday’s election.

It was by any measure a very good night for liberals, who celebrated not only Obama’s victory but also the decriminalization of marijuana in two states and the legalization of gay marriage by popular vote in three. In Maddow’s post-election show Wednesday night, the MSNBC host unleashed an anti-Republican rant that quickly went viral. The party had gotten “shellacked,” she argued, because of their “vacuum-sealed, door-locked spin cycle of telling each other what makes them feel good.”

Colbert asked her why she felt the need to do an “end zone dance.” Maddow claimed she was simply describing what had happened, in simple terms, but “this is one of those days when the facts have a liberal bias.” As for the enthused viewer reaction to it, “Just raw data makes people, like, send you flowers,” she said.

Maddow also denied Colbert’s suggestion that she is a “conservative dream-killing machine.” She did, however, admit that “there’s an important role to play in disabusing people of their fantasies that do not comport with what’s going on in the real world.”

One such person was Fox News contributor and Republican strategist Karl Rove, who practically short-circuited on the air Tuesday when the network called Ohio for Obama.

“The right talked themselves into the idea it was going to be a Romney landslide, based on… I don’t know,” she said. “Karl Rove was saying, ‘Yes I see the polls, but I also see the enthusiastic crowds, and based on the enthusiastic crowds, I am sure he’s going to win.’ Turned out to be a bad way to predict the election.”

Another conservative talking point Maddow dispelled was the idea that Obama won because of Hurricane Sandy. “If the right is going to look at what just happened and say, ‘You know what? But for the storm, we did everything right and the country loves us,’ Democrats are going to be very happy with the next elections too.”

ALSO:
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Karl Rove melts down after Fox News calls Ohio for Obama

Diane Sawyer’s loopy election night behavior sparks speculation

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