RUSH: Here’s some polling data from October 24-26, 1980, ’cause I heard Brit Hume today say… By the way, folks, on this whole business of you being despondent and depressed… I don’t know how many of you are, but I’m telling you: The conservative media out there need the vapors. They’re about ready to toss it in. You know, they live in this media bubble. They live and work in it, and consider themselves part of it, and they’re totally freaked out. They believe every poll that comes out.
To the extent that you read them and access them, I just want to warn you: You’re gonna be hit with fatalism like you haven’t seen before. For example, Hume said on Fox this morning, “Well, you gotta keep in mind that the candidate who is ahead in the polls in mid-September rarely loses.” Well, does anybody remember Carter and Reagan? It wasn’t until the week before the election that the polls started showing the truth of that election. An October 24th, 25th, 26th, 1980, Gallup poll had Carter leading Reagan by three among likely voters; eight points among registered voters.
Reagan ends up winning by ten percentage points.
So Gallup was off by 13 to 18 points just a week and a half before the election — two weeks — which shows me how much Gallup wanted Reagan to lose. Incumbent Democrat presidents usually aren’t reelected. Do you know Bill Clinton is the only Democrat president to be reelected since FDR? Did you know that? Now, you might want to count LBJ being reelected as JFK’s second term, but there obviously were mitigating, extenuating circumstances there. LBJ did not run for a second term. He quit.
(impression) “I will not seek, and I shall not accept, the nomination of my party to be yo’ president. Lady Bird and I would rather go back t’Texas and kick the beagles.” Incumbent Democrats are usually not reelected. Clinton in 1996, if it weren’t for Perot, who knows? Remember the Scott Walker situation in Wisconsin? What were they saying about the Scott Walker recall election against Tom Barrett before the election?
If you remember, they were saying, “This is too close to call. It could be that Walker’s gonna lose the recall.” They were all — all of them in the Drive-By Media — talking about this. Yet Walker won with 53% of the vote. The Loser, Michael Dukakis, had a 17-point lead over George H. W. Bush in 1988 after the Democrat National Convention.
On July 26th, 1988, the New York Times said, “This was among the findings of a national public opinion poll of 948 registered voters conducted late last week for Newsweek magazine by Gallup. Telephone interviews took place July 21st,” which was the last night of the convention. Fifty-five percent said they preferred to see Dukakis win. Thirty-eight percent said Bush.
They had Dukakis up 17 points; Bush ended up winning by eight.
Jimmy Carter led Reagan by four points after his convention in 1980.
If there’s precedent here, it’s not on Obama’s side.