RUSH: This Obama guy is just running away with this. I mean, you’ve got the ‘Potomac primary’ they’re calling tomorrow. He could run away with every… Mrs. Clinton is looking down the road to Ohio and Texas as her next firewall. Mrs. Clinton has gotten rid of Patti Solis Doyle, campaign manager; brought back Maggie Williams from her chief of staff days in the White House; the same Maggie Williams who an investigator says he saw running out of Vince Foster’s office with some files when it had been discovered Foster was dead in Fort Marcy Park. She denied having done that. She had to spend $140,000 in legal fees defending herself in the Whitewater thing. Now she’s back supposedly running the campaign.
Even Frank Rich is upset with the Clintons because they’re obviously — in fact, Frank Rich stole from me! — he’s calling what’s going on in the Democrat Party a ‘civil war.’ I referred to it as an ‘Uncivil War,’ but I was first there, folks. By months I was first to describe what was going on. But besides that, Rich in the New York Times really rips into the Clintons. Apparently Mrs. Clinton had this 21-state national town hall the other day, and didn’t have any blacks in it. There were no black people in any of these satellite cities standing up to ask questions, only Hispanics. And Rich found that to be just reprehensible. Here’s a woman and her husband who have exploited and depended on black votes for all of these years, now freezing them out just to win a primary; throwing blacks under the bus just to win a primary. They are clearly discombobulated at the Clinton camp. She could be looking at 0-for-7 after we get through with the Potomac primary tomorrow. She’s kind of hoping against hope in Virginia, but DC is going to clearly go Obama. Of course, Obama is just messianic. Barack Obama, folks, says nothing better than anybody in a long time. He’s saying nothing, but people are crying, and they’re in tears listening to it. It doesn’t matter what he says. He could say anything. It really doesn’t matter. Mrs. Clinton is discombobulated by all this.
This is the last thing they thought was going to happen. They thought they had this in the bag! They can’t believe it. Here’s one of the problems. When you’re in the left and you’re a Democrat and you give all this puff piece, slavish media holding you up as the greatest thing since ethanol; all of a sudden you start believing that stuff. And I believe the Clintons actually think that this country misses them and has wanted them back in the White House ever since they left the White House, that this was essentially a fait accompli. Never did they factor anything like this from the fundraising side to the popularity of this guy, Obama, or anybody else running against her. This is desperation time, because this is what they’ve been living for. Bill Clinton needs this to try to cement a legacy. Hillary needs this because it’s owed her. Without this — if they don’t get this, if they don’t pull this off — where do they go? What do they do? She stays in the Senate, and what does he do? They will be lost! They will have been rejected Baby Boomers. None of this fit the cards. This is like a huge slap upside the head that they never saw coming. Now, the Democrats are heading to real problems, too, because I’m sure you’re hearing all this talk about super delegates and the super delegates are party officials who don’t have to vote the way their states went.
There are 700-plus of them, I think that’s the number. It really doesn’t matter. That’s not the controversy. The controversy is this: It could well be that after the Democrat primaries are over, Obama will have won the majority of the delegates. (Now, this is before factoring in these super delegates. We’ll get to that in a minute.) He could well win the majority of delegates but not win the popular vote. Now, isn’t this juicy? Because if you go back to 2000, the Democrats starting in 2000 wanted to get rid of the Electorate College because Gore got more of the popular vote but lost the electoral vote. So Mrs. Clinton, you’re going to have almost a situation that repeats itself. She could win the majority of the popular vote and lose because of the delegate count. That’s where the super delegates come in. And if Obama, when they go to the convention, or before… Some people think, by the way — and I don’t put myself in this camp yet — but some people think that the Democrat primaries, the Democrat nomination is going to be decided before the Republican nomination, even though mathematically Huckabee has slim-to-no chance at all, they still think that the way Obama is just steamrolling this thing, that it might be over.
If it’s not, and they go to the convention, and these super delegates — who are mostly party hacks, who have a long series of loyalties to the Clintons and owe them — go with Clinton and she wins the nomination by virtue of people who are not responsive to the way Democrat voters vote, there will be a revolt! You couple that with the fact that Obama is black, you’re going to be looking at a potential 1968 in Chicago all over again. Now, the Democrat grand Pooh-Bahs from Howard Dean on up want to avoid that at all costs. Donna Brazile says (paraphrased), ‘If something like this happens, if the guy who wins the most delegates loses because of these super delegates because these limited number of people, I am leaving the Democrat Party.’ They are already setting the stage here. Ted Olson, who recently endorsed McCain, has a piece in the Wall Street Journal today about the potential lawsuit that could come up. He said, ‘What splendid theater the Democrat Party presidential nominating process is shaping up to be, and they’re just getting started. The real fun would be a convention deadlock a few months from now, the prospect of which is already quickening the pulses of scores of Democrat lawyers who have been waiting more than seven years for an encore of their 2000 presidential election performances. For over seven years, the Democrat Party has fulminated against the Electoral College system that gave Bush the presidency over popular vote winner Algore.
‘But they have designed a Rube Goldberg nominating process that could easily produce a result much like the Electoral College result in 2000: a winner of the delegate count and thus the nominee, over the candidate favored by a majority of the party’s primary voters. As the convention nears, with Senator Clinton trailing slightly in the delegate count, the next step might well be a suit in the Florida courts challenging her party’s refusal to seat Florida’s delegation at the convention — and the Florida courts, as they did twice in 2000, might find some ostensible legal basis for overturning the pre-election rules and order the party to recognize the Clinton Florida delegates. That might tip the balance to Senator Clinton. And we all know full and well what could happen next: the array of battle tested Democrat lawyers who fought for recounts, changes in ballot counting procedures, even re-votes in Florida courts, would separate into two camps: Half of them would be relying on the suddenly respectable Supreme Court Bush v. Gore decision; the other half would be preaching a new-found respect for federalism, demanding that the high court leave the Florida court decisions alone.’ He brings up another thing, too, and that is the Michigan and Florida delegates. Hillary was the only candidate on the ballot in Michigan — well, Mike Gravel was up there.
Those states were told, ‘You’re not going to have your delegates seated because you violated our rules on when you scheduled your primaries.’ You know damn well Mrs. Clinton is going to try to get those delegates seated, and you know damn well she’s going to try to get them voting for her! Folks, imagine two things as you try to understand where the Clintons are here. Whatever it is in your life that you have wanted the most, you have wanted it so badly, it occupied your every waking moment. What you wanted was your soul. Nothing else mattered. There was no other happiness in your life. You had to be focused on what you wanted, and coupled with that desire — whatever that is in your life, coupled with it — the fact that you expect it to happen. I don’t know what it is in your life that you’ve wanted most. I don’t know that I’ve ever wanted anything as much as the Clintons want this. I don’t know that I can come up and tell you that I have something in common with them. But I’m just trying to illustrate for you how badly, how consuming, how obsessed their desire for this is — coupled with their arrogant, condescending expectation that it should be handed to them, that they shouldn’t really have to fight for it.
Then imagine, after eight years of being consumed by this unhealthy desire coupled with an arrogant, condescending view of what you expected, imagine: It’s about to be taken away from you. Before you have it, you thought you’ve got it. You’ve wanted it so bad. Are you just going to say, ‘Oh, okay. I lost it’? No. And then, if you are the Clintons, especially, no. So the idea that they’re not going to try to get these delegates in Florida and Michigan seated; the idea that the super delegates are going to be told, ‘You guys follow your conscience on this;’ the idea that they’re just going to throw their hands and say, ‘Okay, Obama. You won fair and square’ — so this could be real fireworks. I think the strain of all this is showing on Mrs. Clinton. She’s wearing these oddball little yellow outfits, these crazy facial expressions all day yesterday. It is beginning to show. This business about their own… We had a Clinton News Network, then you got the farm team, MSNBC; and you’ve got this David Shuster guy who used the term ‘pimped’ regarding Hillary’s daughter, what’s her name, Chelsea, out there calling the super delegates on behalf of her mother. Nobody heard it because nobody watches that network. Who did hear it?
Media Matters for America, the Hillary front group, they put it out there. Mrs. Clinton, do you think she’s really offended by this, her daughter being referred to as the… Actually, it wasn’t even a slam on Chelsea. It was a slam on Hillary. Aren’t they pimping out their daughter, making her make phone calls? (sigh) So now Hillary writes these letters to MSNBC, and threatens to not appear in their presidential debate. I think this is just like what happened right before the Lewinsky scandal hit, all of a sudden during a press briefing one morning, Mike McCurry’s doing the press briefing, and he stands up and says, ‘I think that that picture that was published in a major newspaper today showing the Clintons on a beach down here in St. Thomas, that is just beyond the pale.’ Everybody said, ‘What picture? We never heard of this. What are you talking about?’ and then they show the picture. They wanted the picture out. They wanted the picture of Mr. and Mrs. Clinton in their swimsuits dancing on a beach where there was no music, where there were no speakers! They were dancing to silent music. It was two weeks before the Lewinsky scandal was going to break and it showed them in a loving brace dancing down there on vacation. I think the same thing happened here. I think they wanted to get it out that somebody at MSNBC, David Shuster, had referred to ‘pimping out’ their daughter just so everybody would know it, because Mrs. Clinton once again gets to play the sympathy card and gets to be a victim of the mean, bad meanies in the press. But the dirty little secret is, it’s MSNBC! Nobody heard it in the first place!
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RUSH: Exactly right. I can’t tell you the number of people I have writing me saying, ‘You know, Rush, the Democrat thing is over, Hillary, I mean it’s over. She doesn’t have a prayer.’ (laughing) Folks, this is not an ‘if.’ When they steal it, and they will steal it, and they will do everything they can to steal it, and there’s any number of things they can do. They can monkey around with the super delegates. They can even go to these states and change some of the delegate counts. They are the Clinton machine, the Democrat machine, and the machine candidate usually wins in this party. But when they steal it, we’re going to be able to say that she was selected, not elected. We’re going to turn this whole Bush thing right back around on them. You have to wonder, at some point, Barry is gonna have to start saying something. It’s only November. He’s going to have to start saying something. He’s saying nothing, better than anybody in a long time. But he’s going to have to start saying something.
I have a theory about this, by the way. I’ve shared this with you over the course of many, many moons. Little Indian lingo there. I go out to LA, meet some Los Angeles liberals, wherever I go, liberals hate Bush or a lot of their hatred is ’cause they don’t think he can talk. He embarrasses them. The president of their country can’t say ‘nuclear.’ The president of their country just can’t speak. He stops and stutters and it just embarrasses them. I think one of the reasons — I’m not exaggerating this — I think one of the reasons that there is such a dramatic devotion to Barack Obama is he can talk. He can speak well in public, and, look, I’ve always told you, you learn to read, write, and speak the English language to the best of your ability and above average, and people will think you’re smart even if you aren’t. The way you speak, the way you use language will convey intelligence that you may or may not have. I’m not saying Obama doesn’t have it, don’t misunderstand; I’m saying you can mask a lot of things. I think there is a yearning — especially among Democrats — for somebody they think is smart, and they’re making the judgment, because he’s not saying anything! Don’t give me this hope business, Snerdley. I’m not visiting that again. Don’t talk to me about hope. He’s not saying anything. It’s still platitudes now, and vision, Camelot. He’s going to have to start saying things, and Mrs. Clinton’s waiting for when he does, because at some point, if he gets the nomination, he’s going to have to go beyond the platitudes. Maybe I’m wrong. Maybe it’s possible that somebody saying nothing better than anybody’s ever said nothing in years could be elected president. Hell, it’s possible.
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RUSH: Quick question. David Shuster. MSNBC. Hillary and Chelsea. Did David Shuster abuse Chelsea the way Hillary’s husband abused a 20-year-old intern named Monica Lewinsky? As I recall, Hillary wasn’t all that concerned about Monica at the time. Look at all the hateful things said about George Bush on that network. Has he ever demanded an apology? No. And he wouldn’t get one if he had. Just asking these questions here, folks. What’s really worse, what Shuster said about Hillary, or what Hillary’s husband did to Monica?