Pet peeve

Why is it that, every single national election year, the mainstream news commentators have to repeatedly mention that the entire House is being elected this year as if this is some obscure part of US election law that they just personally discovered? Congressional seats are elected every two years, meaning every national election. We get it already.

I suppose this says something about their expectations for the understanding of their audience, but I think that's also a cop-out. Talk down to people too much and you create an expectation that a low level of understanding is adequate and expected. Make people reach a bit.

Of course, one thing that watching PBS NewsHour regularly has made abundantly clear is that there's actually only about a half-hour of real national news each day. PBS manages to cover all the facts in the real news and do several documentary segments in less than an hour every day. The cable news stations have to fill the other twenty-three and a half hours of the day by pointing out to us that all of the House, every single seat, even your representative, stands for election every two years. Including this year. In this election. Coming right up. On Tuesday.

I hear that one consequence of this election may be that the parties in control of Congress might change.