The race isn't over until the fat lady sings, or in the case of the elections, until the final polls close and the media speculation shitshow can finally begin in earnest, what with all those magic maps and HD technology and what have you.

But at least one major network and one major blog are predicting an early night, and won't have any qualms about callin' it like they see it.

“We could know Virginia at 7,” (CBS News VP Paul Friedman) said. “We could know Indiana before 8. We could know Florida at 8. We could know Pennsylvania at 8. We could know the whole story of the election with those results. We can’t be in this position of hiding our heads in the sand when the story is obvious.”

H'okay. Just be careful CBS! You wouldn't want to get too cocky and have a repeat of 2004 when networks began predicting a Kerry win and then Slate picked up the story. Surely the venerable blog has learned its lesson?

Similarly, the editor of the Web site Slate, David Plotz, said in an e-mail message that “if Obama is winning heavily,” he could see calling the race “sometime between 8 and 9.”

“Our readers are not stupid, and we shouldn’t engage in a weird Kabuki drama that pretends McCain could win California and thus the presidency,” Mr. Plotz wrote. “We will call it when a sensible person — not a TV news anchor who has to engage in a silly pretense about West Coast voters — would call it.”