RUSH: It is heating up, the Wisconsin primary today. Seventy-four delegates on tap for the Democrats. Superdelegates are being paid by both Barry Obama and Mrs. Clinton, Mrs. Clinton going after Obama’s pledged delegates, and there’s nothing to stop her. The pledged delegates do not and are not required to vote for any particular candidate on the first ballot. They are all up for grabs. It’s like I’ve been saying, ladies and gentlemen, it’s almost like these primaries don’t really count. The pledged candidates are not pledged, and it’s Democrat Party rules. It’s not something the Clintons are finagling. It’s Democrat Party rules. That’s why the superdelegates are there because Democrats never trust voters, even their own, to do the right thing. So the superdelegates are there to mediate and to send the party in the direction the party pooh-bahs want it to go. Now, there is an Arkansas Times journalist, his name is Max Brantley. Max Brantley, one of Hillary’s biggest and most important supporters in Arkansas. He’s known her forever, and he has a little piece here at the Arkansas Times blog. And the title of his post is, ‘It’s Over.’ And when he says it’s over for Hillary, when Max Brantley says it, it has impact.
He writes: ‘I’d be happy to be wrong. For a variety of reasons, I’d prefer Hillary Clinton to be the Democratic presidential nominee. But it’s not going to happen. She’ll be clobbered in Wisconsin tomorrow. She might run ahead, even win, the popular vote in Texas, but the delegate count will be close, probably pro-Obama. The media talk, the popular mood, the times — they all work for Obama. Finally, there’s been the Clinton campaign. Fighting, seriously, today about Obama’s borrowing of rhetoric from a friend is a sign of desperation. Obama is derivative. So is everyone. And Bill Clinton — who knew? — has proved to be a negative. The media megaphone can’t be underestimated. Some of it is crazy. Some of it unfair. So is life. Obama will win the nomination. Polls today say he’ll beat McCain everywhere — in every key state and nationally. Those same polls said the same thing about Hillary Clinton’s sure dominance a few months ago.’ And he closes by writing, ‘For the record.’
So big-time journalist in Arkansas, knows Clinton well, biggest, most important media supporter, says it is over for her. One thing, one caveat. Mr. Brantley here makes my point about polls. Some months ago, the polls said that Hillary was inevitable and that it was over and it was just a matter of time, all we had to do was let the calendar click by, be over. The same thing was said about Rudy Giuliani. I remember people getting all hot to trot about polls last March and April and May, and I kept trying to tell people, ‘They don’t mean anything yet. We haven’t even gotten to the first primary and cauci state. They don’t mean anything.’ Even now, we’ve got a little bit more under the belt, the delegate count is in Obama’s favor. Clearly the polls have a little bit more relevance today than they would have nine months ago. But there’s a lot of things that you have to factor in here that polls do not measure, and that is the interworkings of the Democrat Party and how Mrs. Clinton is attempting to wrest delegates away from Obama. And, by the way, I’m sure he’s trying to do the same thing. I don’t want to make this sound like it’s one-sided, but I just don’t want anybody to think here that this is a senior prom election or a class president election where they’re voting and they’re counting the votes and whoever gets the most delegates is going to win. Not in this party. Not in this race. Not with the Clintons involved.
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RUSH: John in Salt Lake City, we’ll start with you on the phones. Great to have you here, sir. Hello.
CALLER: Pleasure to meet with you today, Rush.
RUSH: Thank you.
CALLER: My question for you today is, how long do you think this fervor for Obama can last? Do you think they can sustain that religious fanaticism all the way through November?
RUSH: No. No, in fact, the Drive-Bys are already starting to poke holes in it and tear it down. I’ve got a whole stack on that that I was going to get to today. They’re starting now to — see, he’s not even writing his speeches. You know who’s writing his speeches?
CALLER: Oh, yeah.
RUSH: Ted Sorenson, Theodore Sorenson is the primary — he’s not the actual speechwriter — but he’s the primary advisor. He wrote speeches for JFK. His speechwriter is 26 years old, but the Drive-Bys are already starting to take some shots here now at some of this messianic aura that surrounds itself, the halo effect, if you will, over the head of Barack Obama. But it’s not just that. You know, I’ve always believed that the American people do not have that deep an emotional reservoir to begin with. I always use this as the example. I will never forget, it was the eighties, I was in Sacramento, and at the time the leftists in this country and around the world were all fed up with F. W. de Klerk, who was the grand pooh-bah, the head Afrikaans of South Africa. Nelson Mandela was in jail. They weren’t going to let him out of jail, and so the divestment in South Africa move began, and every university and every company was urged to divest from South Africa. It was never-ending. It went on for months, and after a while, I got sick and tired of hearing about it, and so did a lot of other people, and I warned the advocates, if you keep this up, people don’t have the ability to feel angry or sad or sorry at the level you need them to be to accomplish this. The emotional reservoirs run dry and they fill up with some new issue or some new cause for concern. This kind of messianic approach that Obama is taking is going to have to be replaced with some specifics at some point if he does get the nomination, and once you start debating with Senator McCain and the media is going to change it’s focus as well as time goes on. I mean, he’s going to have his supporters that will still have this attachment to him and you’re going to have supporters who won’t care what he says as long as he says ‘hope’ and ‘change’ every other word. But in terms of having this — well, no other better word for it than messianic, that can’t be sustained from now to November.
CALLER: Do you think Hillary’s done at this point?
RUSH: Oh, no. (laughing) It may look like it on paper, she may be done, but she’s not done. These are the Clintons. Remember, this is my phrase: Even if he wins the nomination, she’s going to be the nominee. Meaning they’ll fix this at the convention. She’s not going to get out of this. She may lose Wisconsin. She’s a couple of points ahead, maybe three points ahead or four in both Texas, and, where else did I see? Ohio. She’s down by four-and-a-half in the Real Clear Politics rolling average in Wisconsin. Even James Carville is saying that if she loses Texas and Ohio, she’s toast and she’s done. There may be some numbers here that might prove to be insurmountable, but, remember, none of these delegates are pledged, and this is nothing new. This has always been the case. It’s never mattered in the Democrat Party, because they’ve always had their nominee by February or March. But remember, as I so pointed out yesterday, 1968, and that’s memorable for a number of events, of course, the Chicago riots. Also in 1968, Hubert Humphrey was the Democrat nominee. He didn’t win one primary, folks. Now, I know it’s a little different circumstance today than it was then, but 40 years ago the Democrat nominee did not win a single primary.
Walter F. Mondull in 1984 stole pledged delegates to Gary Hart, stole ’em. And Walter F. Mondull ended up being the nominee. I have a theory about this. I went to that convention. I was at the Democrat convention in San Francisco. It was my first-ever political convention. I was doing a morning show in Kansas City, so we had to go on the air, what was it, four in the morning, we were getting up at two, actually, we were staying up all night, sleeping during the day because we had to go to the convention. I remember going to a reception, and that’s where I met Gephardt for the first time. And there was a man from Sikeston, Missouri, a good family friend, a big Democrat, forget his name now, and he was there as a delegate. He was a honcho of the party. And I walked in, and he saw me, and I didn’t see him, he came up and said hello, said, ‘What are you doing here?’ I said, ‘I’m working this for a radio station in Kansas City.’ I said, ‘What do you think your odds are here?’ Now, they had chosen Mondull by this time. He said — I’ll never forget this. ‘You spot me a hundred electoral votes and we can win this.’ I said, ‘Spot you a hundred electoral votes?’ He said, ‘Yeah, I know, I know, I know.’
They knew that they were going to lose so big, they knew he was going to lose, and I actually think they didn’t mind nominating Mondull because it was Mondull’s turn after Jimmy Carter. Mondull had been an old war horse, time to get him out of the way when they had no chance of winning anyway, sort of like us in 1996 and perhaps other years. I think that’s what happened. But Mondull, before all this happened, actually out there stealing delegates from Gary Hart. And once Hart was found on a boat, the Monkey Business boat, and that was really close to home, because Gary Hart’s wife was the sister of Martha Keyes, who was a prominent state legislator, a congressional member from the state of Kansas at the time. It’s all incestuous, folks. It’s just incestuous out there. So it’s too early to say that Mrs. Clinton’s out of this, with all due respect to Max Brantley at the Arkansas Times. He’s looking at the numbers. And, according to the numbers, she’s toast, doesn’t have a prayer, but it’s the Clintons. This is the only reason they’re alive; it’s the only reason that they’re living. This whole nomination is the sum total of every Christmas morning in their lives, with themselves as Santa Claus. So this is going to be juicy.
You got Obama’s wife out there, ‘For the first time in my life, first time in my life I’m happy and proud to be an American.’ That is so repugnant. Do you know even McCain has let his wife Cindy go to the microphone on this. Cindy McCain is saying, ‘Well, I know you heard the comments yesterday. How many of you are proud of your country?’ We’re all proud of our country. That’s the interesting thing. There are so many people in this country who aren’t. They are leftists, they are — (interruption) what? Would I go to a Democrat convention today? I wouldn’t go to a Republican convention today. You kidding me? I wouldn’t go to either one. But it was fun. I also went to the Houston convention, Republican convention in 1992. Wait a second. I went to the Republican convention in ’84, too, when Ronaldus Magnus was being renominated. That was in Dallas. Oh, yeah. I’ll never forget that. I went to the Texas School Book Depository, did a report from there, yeah. That’s where I met George Will down in the bowels below the convention hall.
The last convention I was at was the Clinton convention, ’92 in New York, Madison Square Garden because the broadcast facilities were right there. That’s where we sent Lo Bianco out with the grape Kool-Aid as the Democrat delegates were walking — we thought we were going to smoke Clinton. We thought this hayseed from Arkansas that they’ve nominated. We found the C-SPAN cameras buried in the shrubbery outside the Garden and put Lo Bianco in front of them with a sign, a sandwich board, ‘Grape Kool-Aid for Democrat Delegates.’ They all had a good time with it. But that’s the last one that I’ve been to.