RUSH: Here’s Josh in Lake Worth, Florida. Josh, I’m glad you called. Great to have you on the EIB Network. Hi.
CALLER: Howdy, neighbor. How are you doing today?
RUSH: Very good. Thank you.
CALLER: Pleasure and honor. I got a theory to bounce off of you. You were talking earlier about no president — or incumbent president — has won reelection with more than 8% unemployment.
RUSH: That’s the statistic, yeah.
CALLER: Right. So my theory is I don’t care what “MSDNC” and the other propagandists say off the television. They can say 1% unemployment, but, if the actual number is 20% let’s say, those six million individuals will go into the voting booth and they’ll make a decision. You know, they could say what they want. They could fudge the numbers all they want. But each person is gonna make the decision. So I wonder if it even matters what number they throw up on the screens.
RUSH: Well, it does. It does. I’ll tell you why. Better, I’ll tell you how. I’ll never forget this. Late in the period between 2000 and 2010, starting in 2006-2007, the media every day was doing the best they could to convince the people of this country that we were at the beginning of a recession. The economy was turning down. The Bush tax cuts were destroying everything. The war in Iraq was robbing us of precious money for programs here at home. And I would get phone calls from people who believed it, who were doing fine!
But they were worried about their neighbors, because they’d seen on the news that the unemployment was rising and that government programs were in trouble. So the media can make people who are doing okay believe that a problem is much worse than it is — or, in this case, much better. So if there are people who over the last 3-1/2 years thought the country was headed in a downward spiral from which it wouldn’t recover, and all of a sudden beginning this summer at the Democrat convention the unemployment news is amazingly better?
And the job-output news and the manufacturing numbers all of a sudden start getting better? Then people are going to think, “Well, you know what? It’s getting better out there.” And even if they’re unemployed like you say — even if they’re part of these people unemployed — they might think, “Well, maybe my job prospects are getting better,” and they’ll reenter the market to start looking for job. This is likely to happen. The media, as fractured as they are, still has the ability to make a whole bunch of people believe things which are not true.
The AP, Josh, right now is insisting that all that really matters is the public believes unemployment numbers are trending down.
They’ve said that in a story today. All that matters is that the public thinks the numbers are coming down. That’s all they need to hear, and AP is saying they’re prepared to report that. In fact they did! AP reported today the unemployment number is going to be below 8% on Election Day. They told us. I know your theory is, “Well, they can lie about it all they want but there are gonna be all these millions of people that don’t have jobs and they’re not gonna care what the news is because they’re living the economic misery.” And I, frankly, think that’s true, too. And I don’t think that that’s going to change. What will matter is whether or not those people can be convinced that things are looking better for them.
The media can do it.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: Last night on PBS, The NewsHour, formerly with Jim Lehrer. Jim Lehrer retired. It’s actually “Leh-rer,” but he pronounced it “Lara.” It was his signature thing. It was like he was from the South with one word. Jim Lehrer. Anyway, Gwen Ifill is the co-anchor now and she spoke with USA Today Washington Bureau Chief Susan Page about the presidential election. Gwen Ifill said, “When you talk to voters as you go out to these campaign events and you see the people that they’re talking to — the people who come in the middle of the day, in the middle of the week to a political event — what are they curious about? What are they telling you?”
PAGE: I talked to some voters today at the Romney event. Some of them were Republican voters that had been a little slow to warm to Romney. I talked to a Gingrich voter, another voter who thought, “Was Romney conservative enough?” They seemed to be falling in line behind him. (gasp) Interestingly, several of the voters I talked to in northern Virginia (gasp) today were Obama voters four years ago. That surprised me a little, because (gasp) these kind of events usually get true believers there. (gasp) I mean, that’s a sign that there has been some erosion (gasp), uh, for President Obama —
RUSH: Uh-oh! (gasp)
PAGE: — in these suburbs.
RUSH: Uh-oh! Uh-oh! Panic at PBS!
This is The NewsHour with Gwen Ifill-Lehrer and Susan Page at USA Today says: “I was just at a Romney event, and I ran into some former Obama voters.” Uh-oh! ‘Cause these things happen in the middle of the day and that’s generally only the true believers that show up at those things. A bunch of Obama people were there and “that’s a sign there has been some erosion for Obama in these suburbs.” Better do some more women compressing to deal with this! So Ifill, Gwen Ifill, said, “Well, are these former Obama voters showing up at Romney events, are they curious, or are they switching?”
PAGE: They are switching, and the voters in that category… Now, it’s just a couple voters. It’s not any kind of scientific sample (gasp), but the issue they talk about: It’s the economy, it’s jobs, and it’s the federal debt and deficit.
RUSH: Wow!
And yet for Barack Obama, who killed Osama Bin Laden, that’s the issue he doesn’t want to go anywhere near. (interruption) It does. It sounds like Tea Party people. But they’re Obama voters in Northern Virginia. That’s DC suburbs (that’s another way to look at that), and the DC suburbs are liberal Democrats. That’s all the people with their hands inside the Treasury building, and they’re upset with the economy. The reason I wanted to play these bites is because of our last caller because it may well be he may be right. I hope he is.
It may well be that the media is gonna have its toughest time ever convincing people things are good when they’re not. They did a good job of convincing people things were bad in 2006-2007 when they weren’t. Now they’re gonna have to tell people, “Oh, you’re outta work? Doesn’t matter! That isn’t gonna last long ’cause everything’s roaring back now. Look at the unemployment number. Your house is underwater? Doesn’t matter! Obama’s got a program for that! Your home, your home values? Our experts say they’re gonna start going up here couple days ago after the election!”
That’s what they’re gonna have to do. That takes us to Dick Morris last night on The O’Reilly Factor on Fox News. Question: “Looking at the board here, you’ve got Florida — which everybody says if Romney doesn’t win Florida, lights out, go home. You’ve got, North Carolina, Virginia, and Ohio. All of those four states, they’re gonna tell the tale of the whole country. And it’s kind of a little frightening, is it not, the battle between Romney and Obama is gonna be waged in those states?”
MORRIS: Rather than four or five states in play, I think it’s more like 12 or 15. I think Iowa will have a lot to do with it. Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania I think will be just as key as Ohio. He has a very good chance in Wisconsin and Michigan. I think that he’s gonna carry Pennsylvania. The Republicans picked up five seats in Pennsylvania, the governorship, a Senate seat, and both houses in the legislature. You’re telling me Pennsylvania will go Democratic? No way.
RUSH: He didn’t mention North Carolina. That’s gonna be big, and there are continuing troubles for Obama and the Democrats in North Carolina in paying for the convention. They have passed a law that no lobbyists can donate and very few private citizens. I forget the category, but basically the only people that can donate to the actual convention are unions, or pretty much the only people who can, and they’re ticked off because North Carolina is not a full-fledged union state. The Wall Street Journal has a story on this today that is great.
The story goes on and there are a lot of great pull quotes in it, but dire is the way it’s being portrayed. “West VirginiaÂ’s Democratic Gov. Earl Ray Tomblin announced this afternoon that he will not endorse Barack Obama for re-election in 2012, telling the press: ‘[The president] has apparently made it his mission to drive the backbone of West VirginiaÂ’s economy, coal and the energy industry, out of business.'” Hey, this governor’s right. (interruption) Well, I don’t know, but he’s not gonna endorse Obama.
That doesn’t mean he’s not gonna vote for Obama. “But the governor, who faces a re-election challenge of his own this year, doesn’t plan to support … Romney either. He explained: ‘I do not believe that either candidate has a real understanding of what is important to West Virginia. As governor, I go to work every day to stand up for West Virginians and create jobs. As governor, I know that I must work hard every day to earn the trust…'” blah, blah, blah, blah.
Obama will work it. He’ll get West Virginia, at least probably get this governor. And Senator Manchin is likewise. I’ll tell you: Anybody in West Virginia voting for Obama? (sigh) This is hard to say, but you deserve what you’re gonna get if you vote for this guy. Do you not understand that he has admitted that he wants to drive the coal business out of business? Coal and the energy industries are what West Virginia is all about, the kind of energy that Obama wants to eliminate. I don’t know. In a real world with people paying attention, he wouldn’t get one vote out of that state. In a real world.
Related Links