It was getting late Tuesday night on CNN, the results were breaking hard for Democrats, and Kasie Hunt was clearly enjoying the view.
The decision desk was still being careful, she told Anderson Cooper. But the Republicans and Democrats she'd been talking to saw "a blue tsunami" coming. Republicans expected to lose Ohio and Kansas. James Talarico was outperforming in Texas.
This was "a level that honestly was the greatest fear for Republicans," Hunt said, and something "Democrats didn't dare to hope for."
David Axelrod, the old Obama strategist who now gets paid by CNN to analyze elections, jumped in to call it "a repudiation that is absolutely broad. And the through line is Donald Trump."
"He is on the ballot, whether you're a Republican or a Democrat," Cooper agreed.
Then Hunt finished her thought. "And it took us years to get there, too."
Us.
Maybe there's an innocent reading of that. We looked for one. The sentence came right after she described what Democrats "didn't dare to hope for," on a night Democrats got it, and she didn't say "them" or "the party." She said "us," like someone who'd been in the war room.
Look at how the sentence is built, too. "It took us years to get there" has effort in it, and patience, and a finish line somebody finally crossed. Reporters don't talk about results they covered that way. Campaign staff talk that way about races they ran.
CNN has spent years swearing it's a straight news operation. This is the network of "Facts First" and the endless segments on why journalism matters to democracy. It's also the network that seats Scott Jennings as the lone Republican on a panel and calls the result balanced.
Hunt's word didn't come out of nowhere. Axelrod made the night about Trump, Cooper made the night about Trump, and Hunt finished the thought for the whole desk.
Conservatives who watched didn't learn anything new on Tuesday. What's new is the next two years. Democrats are taking over both houses of Congress in January, and they're walking into a Washington press corps that just told you, on a live mic, whose side it was on.
Every time CNN covers the new Democratic majority between now and 2028, remember the pronoun.
"It took us years to get there, too."
