THE PERILS OF PACIFIC TIME
Easterners don't really believe that it's three hours earlier on the West Coast. From today's San Francisco Chronicle:
California Democrats were still heading to the polls late Tuesday afternoon when networks announced John Kerry as the likely Democratic nominee -- and John Edwards as a has-been.
By 5 p.m., a full three hours before polls closed in the nation's most populous state, CNN reported that Edwards was expected to drop out of the Democratic presidential race today. The announcement surprised party insiders and angered some supporters who hoped the North Carolina senator would grab enough of the state's 370 delegates to keep his hopes alive.
The networks make a big deal of not reporting results (except in Florida) while the polls are still open. But in national elections, the polls are still open on the West Coast for a long, long time. And then there's Hawaii (but at least it's small and overwhelmingly Democratic).