MSNBC’s election coverage was led by a panel comprised mostly of its opinionated prime-time hosts (Keith Olbermann, Chris Matthews, Rachel Maddow and Lawrence O’Donnell, along with frequent contributor Eugene Robinson), with nary a conservative voice in the mix. In contrast, Fox News’s was provided by two anchors from its straight-news dayside, Megyn Kelly and Bret Baier, along with a panel that included conservatives like Karl Rove as well as liberals like Juan Williams. Bill O’Reilly and Sean Hannity stopped by only briefly.

At times, MSNBC’s panel generated more drama than the races, like when Rachel Maddow responded to Dan Coats’s Senate victory in Indiana with an attack on Evan Bayh, saying that Bayh knew he was the only Democrat who could hold onto that seat but decided not to run again anyway. He is, she said, “now essentially reinventing himself as a pundit who talks smack about Democrats and how badly they are doing as a party and how that is seen in the seats they lose, one of which he gave away.”

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There was also the moment when Chris Matthews asked a victorious Michele Bachmann in a combative interview: “Has someone hypnotized you? Because no matter what I ask you, you give the same answer.”

Fox News seemed determined to resist these kinds of fireworks, no matter how tempting they were to set off. When Christine O’Donnell’s loss in Delaware was called, Kelly offered Rove — who had famously called O’Donnell “nutty” and a liability for Republicans — a chance to say “I told you so,” but he refused to take the bait.

“It gave me no pleasure to say that she was unlikely to win,” he said. “But this again provides a lesson. This is a candidate who was right on the issues but who had mishandled a series of questions brought up by the press.”

Later on Fox, Palin, whose endorsement had been instrumental to O’Donnell’s upset primary victory over Mike Castle, said she was “not surprised” that O’Donnell was defeated in a “deep blue state” like Delaware.

If there was an overarching narrative of the night, it was hard to pin down, particularly when it came to the media’s favorite political topic, the tea party. Rand Paul’s Senate victory in Kentucky was one of the first races to be called, but decisive losses for O’Donnell and Sharron Angle — not to mention a bat-wielding Carl Paladino — soon followed. As of this writing, Joe Miller’s fate in Alaska is still in the hands of the people trying to decipher the handwriting of write-in voters — and it most likely will be for a while.

How the night went for President Barack Obama, however, was easy to divine. As Brokaw put it, a little after 1 a.m.: “This has been a huge defeat for the president tonight.”

CLARIFICATION: This story has been updated to reflect that it was McManus, not Kaplan, who negotiated with CBS for expanded election coverage.