THAT SILLY MAINSTREAM PRESS MIGHT NOT LOOK SO SILLY SOON*

People across the political spectrum are having a self-righteousness-gasm in response to this story from Yahoo's Upshot blog:

The most covered candidate of 2010: Christine O’Donnell

Senate candidate Christine O'Donnell ... has vaulted from zero national name recognition to garnering more coverage than any other 2010 candidate, according to research provided by Pew's Project for Excellence in Journalism....

Dave Weigel sneers that the press "focus[es] on elections the way American Idol producers focus on which schmucks they'll use from the audition footage." Weasel Zippers thinks the damn liberals in the Em-Ess-Emm covered her because she's "the Tea Party candidate most likely to lose." Ezra Klein wonders whether this is what you get when you believe in "markets in everything."

Except that maybe it wasn't so crazy after all:

Coons Camp Expresses Turnout Worries

... In a noon email alert to supporters, [Chris] Coons campaign manager Christy Gleason said close monitoring of voter turnout in the state's 41 representative districts showed "lower turnout in New Castle and Kent counties than we're comfortable with."

To win, Mr. Coons will have to get heavy support from Democrats and independents in New Castle, the state's most populous county. In the primary, Ms. O'Donnell drew heavy support from the state's other two counties, Kent and Sussex, which skew more to the right.

I'm worried too. I live in New York -- the one other state where a teabagger seems to have been laughed out of contention -- and when I went to vote this morning, in my extremely blue neighborhood, turnout was not very heavy at all. Like Delawareans, New Yorkers think a Cuomo win is a lock, as are victories by Schumer and Gillibrand.

Um, I sure hope so. But here and in Delaware, maybe you folks should get your butts out to the polls, just to be on the safe side.

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The Upshot story seems to confirm what David Brooks sniffily wrote last week:

... Democrats and their media enablers have paid lavish attention to Christine O’Donnell and Carl Paladino, even though these two Republican candidates have almost no chance of winning. That's because it feels so delicious to feel superior to opponents you consider to be feeble-minded wackos.

On the other hand, Democrats and their enablers have paid no attention to Republicans like Rob Portman, Dan Coats, John Boozman and Roy Blunt, who are likely to actually get elected. It doesn't feel good when your opponents are experienced people who simply have different points of view. The existence of these impressive opponents introduces tension into the chi of your self-esteem....

Except that if you go to FoxNews.com and search for stories over the past year about these people, here are the numbers you get:

Rob Portman: 44.
Dan Coats: 40.
John Boozman: 39.
Roy Blunt: 47.
Christine O'Donnell: 185.

Even Carl Paladino gets 51 hits, more than any of Brooks's sober, responsible candidates. And Crazy Sharron Angle tops 'em all: 239 hits. Damn liberal Fox News!

And the Upshot story notes that Pew's sample covered stories "across five platforms -- broadcast networks, cable news networks, online outlets, newspapers and talk radio." Talk radio? If this were a liberal plot to highlight teabagging embarrassments, wouldn't talk radio have tipped the balance in favor of, say, that fine, upstanding winner-to-be Dan Coats?

Sorry, liberals shouldn't take the rap for this. And hell, O'Donnell might (gulp) even win.

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MORE: From The Hill:

Delaware's state Democratic Party is claiming that supporters of Republican Senate candidate Christine O'Donnell are creating problems at some polling locations in the state.

This, as the campaign of Democrat Chris Coons e-mails supporters expressing concerns over turnout levels in the Democratic bastion of New Castle County.

... the state's commissioner of elections, Elaine Manlove, confirmed ... that after receiving several complaints from voters at polling stations Tuesday, she contacted the O'Donnell campaign and asked that it direct its supporters to tone down their efforts.

She said O'Donnell backers were crowding the exterior of several polling places in anticipation of the candidate's arrival, which briefly restricted access for some voters.

"The campaign was basically sending out advance teams to polling places to form crowds before [O'Donnell] got there to greet voters," said Manlove. "My issue with that is that at some places they were blocking the sidewalk and voters need to have access to polling places at all times." ...

Republicans: is this the person you really want to elect by illegal electioneering and harassment?

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*UPDATE: False alarm -- Coons won handily.