RUSH: Hilarious story from the AP. Unemployment applications went up, and AP said that this is a sign that the job market is improving, that it is steadying out. An increase in unemployment compensation requests, and this is good news for the employment market.
And then there’s this. There’s a Pew Research Center poll out. “Fifty percent of adults defined as ‘middle class’ have suffered its worst decade in modern history.” I saw that last night, and that’s the first thing I saw, and I went, “Well, what are people gonna make of this? Worst decade in modern history.” This we know. People in the middle class know it. People not in the middle class looking at it know it. Everybody. This economy is pathetic. So the Pew Center says that roughly 50% of adults defined as middle class have suffered the worst decade in modern history. In fact, the American middle class has fallen backward in income for the first time since the end of World War II.
According to Pew, 85% of middle class Americans say it is more difficult now than a decade ago to maintain their standard of living, 85%. Eighty-five percent say it is more difficult now than it was ten years ago to maintain their standard of living. Sixty-two percent say a lot of the blame lies with Congress. A slight majority says a lot lies with banks and financial institutions. Eight percent blame the middle class. In other words, 8% blame themselves. Apparently Pew didn’t ask anybody if they blamed Obama. Maybe they didn’t want to know.
But then I went over and I was reading the AP’s report of the Pew study, and, in fact, Pew did ask about Obama. They just didn’t report it. AP did ask what people think Obama’s relationship is to the worst decade they’ve had since World War II. Thirty-four percent of the respondents did blame the regime. That’s up. It used to be that a vast, vast majority — and it still is a majority — blame Bush, but 34% of the respondents blame the Obama administration. For some reason, AP buried that way down in the bottom of the piece. Pew didn’t report it at all in their own study. You had to go out and find it.
Now, probably the most disturbing part of the Pew study is this: Sixty-three percent of the general public, including 67% of the middle class, think that people who want to get ahead can make it if they’re willing to work hard. Only 63% — in the United States of America — only 63% think that people who want to get ahead can make it if they’re willing to work hard. Well, it’s more than you thought it would be? In 1999 it was 74%. We’re down 14% in 12 years. In 1999, 74% thought so. Now we’re down to 63%. So, folks, it even gets worse here. Only 43% in the middle class, only 43% say that their children’s standard of living will be better than their own. Forty-seven percent think it’s gonna be worse.
This is not the way Americans used to think, and it’s not the way they used to feel, in addition to think. It’s not the way that they used to fashion their own futures. It’s not the way they looked at the future for themselves and for their kids. I’m here to tell you this is what four years of Obama’s hope and change have gotten us. This has nothing to do with Bush. And I’m gonna tell you, this is one of these statistics that doesn’t show up in a whole lot of polling data and this gets buried in AP’s own story. The fact that people have this attitude is going to translate into changing something now. This is not the kind of thing, “Well, you know what, let’s give this guy four more years.” The down slope has been long enough, even if they do want to say they included some of Bush. Let’s say the down slope’s been ten years, they don’t want four more years for it to bottom out and then pick up.
They’re gonna want this change immediately, and the Romney-Ryan campaign is appropriate, I think. They’re saying and doing the right things in relationship to this. Now, get this, though. I might have been wrong. It’s a tough thing to believe that I might have been wrong, but I might have wrong about what is the most demoralizing part of the study. Get this: Fifty-two percent of middle class adults say that Obama’s policies in a second term would help the middle class. Thirty-nine percent say they wouldn’t. That’s demoralizing. This is the Pew study: 52% of middle class adults say Obama’s policies in a second term would help the middle class. Only 42% say electing Romney would help the middle class.
About as many, 40%, say that it would not. That’s not good, folks. If it’s accurate, it just shows what a good job the news media and the education system have done in dumbing down the country. But I’m gonna choose to not fall prey to what I think are attempts to demoralize and dispirit everybody. See, here’s what it boils down to: I think that the country could survive four more years of Obama. But I don’t believe the country can survive in a country full of people that would reelect him. That’s the great fear.
You know, we can handle Obama, but I don’t know what we can do about a majority of people that would reelect the guy. Bob Tyrrell, American Spectator, has a column out today. He says bluntly: “Obama’s Looking for the Moron Vote,” these people that hang around with their mouths open all the time because they don’t know what else to do. “Duhhh.” Idiots. He makes it plain that Obama is going for “the Moron Vote.” And there’s no question Obama’s going for the Moron Vote.
And the Democrats have calculated that there are a majority of morons that are gonna vote, and they can win ’em. And that they’re content to let Romney and Ryan get serious and talk about these things that really matter because the Obama team thinks people don’t give a rat’s rear end about this. They don’t want to think about this stuff seriously. 
All they want to know is: Is there gonna be an interruption of what they’re getting? And if there might be an interruption of what they’re getting, they’re not gonna vote for the people they think are gonna cause that interruption.
That’s what Obama’s calculation is.
And it’s always boiled down to that for us. I know it has for you, too. Four years, we can handle Obama. But can we handle a country with a majority of people that would reelect the guy? I mean, Biden! Biden is the poster boy for the Moron Vote. The more I think about it, the more I think they’re sending Biden out to act and be stupid purposely, to relate to the people they’re trying to get to vote for ’em. “Hey, we’re just like you! We got a guy here just as moronic as you are, just as stupid as you are — and look at him!
“He’s the vice president. Look what could happen to you, too. All you gotta do is vote Democrat, be as dumb as a skunk, and you, too, might even end up being vice president.”