Dave "Doctor" Gonzo is hunkered down in a secluded hotel suite in the most appropriate city from which to cover election night -- Las Vegas. He has at his disposal six televisions, three phones, a rented cell phone, a fax, his lovely wife and political analyst Krysztyna, a case of Ommegang Ale flown in from Cooperstown, a case of Saranac Black and Tan, a case of Moritz Winter Brew, three cases of Poland Spring water, seven pounds of coffee from the Porto Rico Trading Company in New York, an espresso maker, three grocery bags of fresh fruit, seven grocery bags full of junk food, and the Powerbook of Love running MacOS8.5. His election dispatches will be issued daily until the Wednesday after election day.

"The Doc" is a former disgruntled senior executive of a large media company that went south when it was bought out by another large media company. He is now a high-priced consultant in the beer and communications industries. His political rants appear exclusively in American Politics Journal.

November 2, 1998 -- LAS VEGAS -- ...and begin they have!

The Doc has three TVs fired up as he enjoys his breakfast. CNN, CNNfn and MSNBC are rockin' in the background. It's all punditry all day, with MSNBC pulling in the big-name gasbags this morning.

We've turned up the sound on "CNN & Company" (which my wife Krysztyna ruefully refers to as "Bitches in Boxes") because Kellyanne Fitzpatrick is on today, and she's bound to say something that will have us rolling on the floor sooner or later.

Meanwhile, The Doc has disconnected the fax so he can hook up a second computer to monitor the Web for not only the usual political news but all the weirdness bound to show up on other sites.

We're anticipating a fun evening with about a dozen of our best Left-coast friends. Stiggs is hard at work figuring final point spreads on the senatorial and gubernatorial races and even a few of the hot House seats.

DATELINE: Washington, DC -- Here's another sign of just how bad the GOP image has taken it on the chin:

First, the GOP had to spend most of the last week of election campaigns putting their top spin warriors out on the front lines both to defend the decision to run anti-Clinton ads in a number of states and to downplay grossly diminished expectations that gains in both houses of Congress will be of the single-digit variety rather than of the "40 in the House" variety hawked by the now-floundering Newt Gingrich a month ago.

Then, news reports yesterday exposed a GOP plan to "monitor" minority precinct activity with video cameras -- a not-so-veiled intimidation tactic aimed at potential minority voters.

The spontaneous negative press -- which included criticism from a number of usually conservative pundits and prognosticators -- led the GOP to call a news conference yesterday to counter charges of voter intimidation.

Surprise! The GOP had to scuttle the conference when a phalanx of disabled protestors blockaded their D Street party headquarters with their wheelchairs and canes to grab attention for their criticisms of how Medicaid money is spent! To be perfectly fair, the blockade also affected the Democrat's DC headquarters -- which is just around the corner.

The Republicans were forced to use a satellite link to cable and broadcast networks to defend their egregious electioneering.

And naturally, none of the network news programs covered this story, because -- let's face it -- since OJ, anything to do with race has become a ratings-grabbing story and nothing looks more unglamorous than a group of disabled people who could really use actual help and benefit from better and more effective government spending. It's a lead-pipe cinch that the GOP denials, denials and denials would have run on all three evening newscasts had not the protesters shown up to bring attention to an issue that usually gets swept under the carpet.

Shame on the networks. And hats off to the protesters -- and ADAPT, the disabilities advocacy group that organized the blockade -- for trying to bring attention to this issue, which deserves attention.

DATELINE: NEW YORK -- OOPS!!

ABC News was forced to make an embarrassing apology this morning after a major election-eve gaffe as they posted phony election results with "100% [of polling places] reporting" nearly a full day before polling spots closed!

Here's part of their mea culpa:

"Last night, during testing of the site (abcnews.com), we inadvertently posted results and erroneous predictions on the outcomes of the political races. There was no bias intended by what we posted and the predictions do not reflect the reporting or news judgment of ABC News."

"We sincerely apologize to all our readers for any confusion. We are taking steps to ensure similar mistakes do not happen in the future."

ABC News spokeswoman Michelle Bergman later said "When the contents were pointed out, it was changed immediately'' and that there would be no further explanation concerning the mistake, which infuriated a large number of candidates and election staffers.

American Politics Journal was the first periodical to report this gaffe in a DIS-patch to their exclusive mailing list.

DATELINE: YOUR REMOTE -- Here's the skinny on Election coverage tonight (all times EST):

CNBC - 10 to 11 PM - Brian Williams anchors (the one hour he won't be on MSNBC).

CNN - 5 PM to who knows - Bernard Shaw, Judy Woodruff and Jeff Greenfield co-anchor with commentary by Brooks Jackson, Bob Franken and Bruce Morton, plus scheduled guests Mike McCurry, Tony Blankley and Stuart Rothenberg.

C-SPAN - 8:30PM - C-SPAN will combine their own live coverage with live and tape-delay feeds from at least a dozen stations around the country, including victory and concession speeches. Look for heavy coverage of the New York and California races along with Illinois, Kentucky, North Carolina, South Carolina and Washington.

Fox News Channel - 7 PM to 2 AM - Brit Hume and Catherine Crier anchor "You Decide '98" (as in their ad slogan: "We report, you decide" -- after you laugh your butt off at how slanted the coverage is). Hume and Cryer are joined the usual suspects: Tony Snow, Fred Barnes, Juan Williams and Michael Barone.

MSNBC - 7 PM to the early hours - Brian Williams anchors 7 to 10 and 11 to 1, when they air NBC's coverage hosted by Tom Brokaw and Tim Russert.

ABC - 10 to 11 PM - Peter Jennings, Cokie Roberts, Sam Donaldson, Bill Kristol, George Will, George Stephanopoulos and political analyst Lynn Sherr. (network spokespersons deny that they will be posting results of future elections as did their website yesterday).
11:35 PM to 12: 35 AM - Nightline covers late results.
12:35 to 1:05 AM - Politicallu Incorrect - Should be worth a watch if it's even half as funny as their post-election post-mortem of '96. Bet they have something to say about the abcnews.com gaffe!

CBS - Updates from Dan Rather beginning at 6 PM, with a full hour of coverage beginning at 10 PM featuring Bob Schieffer, Paula Zahn, Ed Bradley and Mike Wallace. They also roll out their new state-of-the-art studio tonight. Is it HDTV ready? Tech-heads want to know...

NBC - 10 to 11 PM and 1 AM to 2 AM - Tom Brokaw and Tim Russert. Krystyna calls it "the network news equivalent of 'Dumb and Dumber.' "

DOC's BEST BET: He'll be watching a lot of the C-SPAN coverage with one eye on CNN and CBS, and maybe slum a little and watch Fox. Politically Incorrect will also be a must -- we can pick up the East Coast feed.

DATELINE: THE WEB -- Just FYI, these sites will be carrying instantaneously updated election results:

The New York Times
USA Today
The Washington Post
AOL
CNN
C-SPAN (bootstrapping with AP)
MSNBC
ABC News
CBS News
Fox News

DATELINE: LAS VEGAS -- If you haven't voted, do it NOW!!

Poll closing times are as follows (all times EST):

6 PM: Indiana -- Kentucky

7 PM: Florida -- Georgia -- New Hampshire -- South Carolina -- Vermont -- Virginia

7:30 PM: North Carolina -- Ohio -- West Virginia

8 PM: Alabama -- Connecticut -- Delaware -- District of Columbia -- Illinois -- Kansas -- Maine -- Maryland -- Massachusetts -- Michigan -- Mississippi -- Missouri -- New Jersey -- Oklahoma -- Pennsylvania -- Tennessee -- Texas

8:30 PM: Arkansas

9 PM: Arizona -- Colorado -- Louisiana -- Minnesota -- Nebraska -- New Mexico -- New York -- North Dakota -- Rhode Island -- South Dakota -- Wisconsin -- Wyoming

10 PM: Idaho -- Iowa -- Montana -- Nevada -- Utah

11 PM: California -- Hawaii -- Oregon -- Washington

12 midnight: Alaska

Now get out and vote if you haven't! 'Nuff said.

--Dave "Doctor" Gonzo