Never mind the concession speech from John Kerry. I want a concession speech from Dan Rather. During this entire campaign, the mainstream press has fed us a steady diet of myths, lies, conventional wisdom, and liberal pipe dreams that have been thoroughly discredited. Time and time again, the networks and left-of-center pundits put their faith in ideas and theories that have now been as debunked as a CBS memo written by Bill Burkett. Among the worst:

Young voters would turn out for Senator Kerry. Yes more than 1.4 million new young voters registered to vote in this election, but the youth block comprised roughly the same percentage of voters that it did four years ago, according to Associated Press exit polls. Considering how much the AP exit polls appeared to overstate Democratic support, the “young voters” myth has been exposed as just that. Smart left-of-center blogger Josh Marshall put it bluntly: “the much-ballyhooed youth vote simply did not show up.” Then he flip-flopped, writing, “the proportion of the electorate made up by the youth vote did not increase.” Some myths die hard.

The talking heads who hype the youth vote every four years are the most diehard optimists this side of Red Sox fans – although the Red Sox hopes were exponentially more plausible. Every presidential election, reporters go to college campuses and talk to the small subsection of young people who follow politics, and conclude that the young voters are going to show up this year (and vote Democratic.) Howard Dean’s campaign manager, Joe Trippi, repeated endlessly on the talking heads shows that young people would “make the difference” for Mr. Kerry. Few asked him why those young people couldn’t get Mr. Dean the Democratic nomination.

MTV’s “Rock the Vote” campaign, P. Diddy’s “Vote or Die” campaign, the lunatic rumors that the draft was coming back, the campaigning by Cameron Diaz. In the end, none of that had a noticeable effect.

Cell phone voters. This bit of wishful thinking emerged in the final weeks of the campaign, when Democrats began to speculate that perhaps there were thousands upon thousands of voters who didn’t have land lines, who weren’t showing up in the opinion polls. I heard one Democratic strategist believed Kerry would win the popular vote by 7 percentage points, because of this under-the-radar reservoir of Kerry supporters.

You have a better chance of finding the Loch Ness Monster. Slanted pollsters. Special derision should be reserved for John Zogby, who has been eating out on his reputation for the 1996 and 2000 elections a little too long. He botched the 2002 elections worse than any other pollster, and this year, there’s no other way to say it: His polls were garbage. His final poll had Colorado too close to call. Mr. Bush won by 7 percentage points. He had Florida by a tenth of a percentage point for Kerry and ‘trending Kerry.’ Bush won by 5 percentage points. Mr. Zogby had Mr. Bush winning North Carolina by 3. The president won John Edwards’ home state by 13. Zogby had Mr. Bush leading Tennessee by 4. The president won by 14. Mr. Zogby called Virginia a “slight edge for Bush.” Mr. Bush won by 8. In West Virginia, Mr. Zogby predicted a Bush win by 4; the president won by 14. And in the vital swing state of Wisconsin, Mr. Zogby had Kerry up by 6. The final margin was 1 point. Those numbers aren’t a measurement of the voting public. They’re a DNC wish list. John Kerry is a great closer. Allow me to brag for a moment. I was writing that this was nonsense in the pages of National Review back in September. Mr. Kerry had only four races in his life that were even close, and three were Democratic primaries. The fourth was the 1996 Senate race against William Weld, where Mr. Kerry never trailed in consecutive polls. Tales of his miraculous comeback were greatly exaggerated.

There was never anything to Mr. Kerry’s “great closer” reputation, but his campaign and the press kept repeating it like a mantra, using it as way to refute bad news for the Democrats throughout the campaign season.

We’re a narrowly divided country.

Eleanor Clift was still pushing this one on Fox News yesterday morning.

We were, briefly, a 50/50 nation in 2000. The results of the 2002 election should have laid that myth to rest – while the GOP didn’t have a huge margin, they clearly tipped the scales in their direction. This year, Mr. Bush won a majority, the first by a president since 1988. He won 58.9 million votes, more than Ronald Reagan in 1984. The Republican Party has held the House of Representatives for a decade, gained seats there, expanded its margin in the Senate, holds a clear majority of the governor’s mansions. This is a majority party.

And what’s more, the left threw absolutely everything they had at this president. Normal presidential campaigns don’t usually include movies that allege the Afghanistan war was over a natural gas pipeline. Or Bruce Springsteen doing concerts with the Democratic nominee. Or Web ads comparing the incumbent to Hitler. Or George Soros throwing millions and millions to liberal groups. Or the governor of Pennsylvania signing off on a get-out-the-vote effort in prisons, while obstructing absentee ballots for soldiers overseas.

The left used everything in their arsenal, and they did worse than 2000. President Bush improved on his performance in 2000 in 46 out of the 50 states, including Massachusetts – though perhaps we shouldn’t be surprised, as those voters know Mr. Kerry best. And now the left is left with nothing.

Mr. Geraghty writes the “Kerry Spot” feature on National Review Online.