RUSH: You remember what the narrative was on Friday. Isn’t it, by the way, interesting that we don’t even call it “news” anymore? Because there is no news reporting. The media does not do news reporting. There is a narrative established every day. Somewhere it’s decided in the bowels of the Drive-By Media, New York Times or wherever it’s decided on and it’s the narrative for all of the pro-Obama media everywhere. That’s how you can get on CNN and every other network talking about, “Oh, no, oh, no the race is tightening.”

The narrative last Friday, might be Thursday but I think it was Friday. Steve Hayes, Weekly Standard, was on Fox, and he said he had talked to some Republican pollsters, and what was it that they had found? When Bill Clinton, at the Democrat convention, said, (imitating Clinton) “You know, nobody could have fixed this economy. This economy is worse than anything anybody knew. Bush didn’t tell Obama the truth about it when he got there, when he showed up. And I’m just here to tell you, there is not a single president that coulda done any better, including me. Heh. If you can believe that, not even I coulda done any better with this.”

And so that was the Clinton bounce. That was the Obama bounce. That launched Obama. That took all the incompetence off the table. That took the poor economy off the table. Clinton had done it. Now, it’s gone over a weekend, the narrative has suddenly changed. The race is tightening, oh, no! And now it might not even center on Obama’s likability. It might center on job performance. And at CNN they’re in a mild form of panic. Gloria Borger also on CNN last night on Wolf Blitzer’s show. Blitzer said, “If you take a look at these state polls, Gloria, as important as the national polls are, what’s happening in these battleground states, that’s a lot more important.”

BORGER: And the question is whether the difference between the national polling and the battleground state polling is sustainable and whether that will continue. I think there are a bunch of things going on. First of all, in some of these states like Ohio and Virginia, for example, the unemployment rate is lower in those states than it is nationally, and everybody I talk to says you’re not sure whether battleground states are a leading indicator or are they a lagging indicator. So if the national polls tighten, will the statewide polls tighten?

RUSH: Oh.

BORGER: We’re going to have to see and see whether these things tighten at the state level.

RUSH: Oh, no! Oh, no! It was just last Friday Clinton had spoken, he had exonerated Obama, nobody could have fixed the economy. We had the ABC/Washington Post. We had the New York Times/CBS. In these three swing states, Obama was up ten, he was up 11, and now in just two workdays, in just two business days, now here’s Gloria Borger, “Oh, you know what, national numbers, if they move toward Romney, so will the swing states, Wolf. Wolf, it’s not intelligent to think that the national numbers switch to Romney but somehow in those three swing states Obama stays up ten? Ah, ain’t gonna work that way, Wolf.” And at CNN they’re going, “Oh, no! Oh, no!”

Now, what was in this poll? What are they so worried about? Well, the new CNN poll that was released yesterday afternoon at four o’clock has Obama up three. The sample was 37% Democrat, 29% Republican, 34% independent, where Romney is up by eight. So they had a sample of plus eight Democrats. That’s using the 2008 exit poll model with a Democrat sample of plus eight, Obama is up three. Romney is up eight with independents and better with his base and more enthusiasm on the Republican side. So how did we get Obama plus three? I’ll tell you something else now.

The Washington Post poll, they based those three state findings, Obama up ten or 11, on a poll of 160 people with a margin of error of plus or minus eight. That’s unbelievable. I’ve never seen a poll released with a margin of error plus or minus eight. But 160 people! That’s like four people in every state that they polled. What does all this mean? Well, among other things, the polls are now back to where they were before Bill Clinton said, (Clinton impression) “You know, there’s not a soul out there who coulda done any better than I did, any better than Barack did. I couldn’ta done it. I mean, this was such a mess. That economy was so bad. I just want you trust me. I never worked harder at any time in my life looking at this. I’m here to tell you, there’s not a soul out there coulda done any better. Limbaugh couldn’ta done any better.”

So after all of this, after $300 million Obama dollars spent defaming Romney, the untold billions of dollars in free media Obama gets, hasn’t been able to move the needle at all. It’s still Obama plus two, Obama plus three, Obama plus one in the margin of error. After all that money, after all those defamatory ads, after all the free media, after all the character insults and assaults on Romney, what did they get for it? Nothing. Zip, zero, nada, as expressed by the polls.

You know what else is interesting? If you go back and look at the Benghazi attack, Obama didn’t say anything. Romney did. Romney came out, issued a statement. What was the media reaction? He shot before he aimed. That was a gaffe. Who does this guy think he is? You don’t come out and talk about this before you know — the media is covering Romney as though he is the president and they are doing the job they’re supposed to do, in the sense that they are supposed to question authority, they’re supposed to not trust government. But Romney hadn’t done anything. Romney is just a candidate. He’s being treated as though he’s president and Obama is a challenger. They’ve done a pure 180.

Back to this CNN poll. Fifty-two percent of men have an unfavorable opinion of Obama. Forty-seven percent of men have an unfavorable opinion of Romney. Fifty-four percent of women have an unfavorable opinion of Romney; 40% unfavorable Obama. Forty-three percent of women like Ryan; 51% of women really like Biden. That’s the CNN poll. In all of that, with Romney up eight in independents, with a plus eight Democrat advantage in the sample, Obama is up three. And so now the narrative is that the polls are tightening, as we draw closer to Election Day, and this is going to be something that you will see throughout the Drive-By Media.

An interesting story today, too, in a blog on the Politico called Under the Radar, by Josh Gerstein. “When a pollster or strategist for a struggling political campaign presents what seems like a sugar-coated view of his candidate’s chances, do you ever think: I wish I could give that adviser some truth serum, or maybe put him under oath? Well, truth serum may be pushing it, but the put-him-under-oath part has actually happened. And when a pollster is required to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth, under penalty of perjury, what emerges is quite a bit different than what you hear in the waning days of a presidential campaign. In May, the pollster for Al Gore’s presidential bid in 2000 and John Edwards’s in 2004 and 2008 –” guy’s name is Harrison Hickman. He polled for Gore in 2000 and for John Edwards in 2004, 2008. He was called to testify in the federal criminal case against Edwards over alleged campaign finance violations. He took the stand.

“Under oath, Hickman admitted that in the final weeks of Edwards’s 2008 bid, Hickman cherry-picked public polls to make the candidate seem viable, promoted surveys that Hickman considered unreliable, and sent e-mails to campaign aides, Edwards supporters and reporters which argued that the former senator was still in the hunt,” even though Hickman knew he wasn’t. In other words, the guy under oath, a pollster testified that he sent out flawed data when he knew at the time his candidate’s chances were finished. He was sending out flawed data to keep the donations coming in, to keep the media on board that Edwards campaign was still viable, when it was dead. So here we have a pollster under oath admitting he put out false data.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Here’s Gallup Daily Tracking Poll: 47% approve of the job Obama’s doing, 46% disapprove. Their daily tracking poll has got it a point. Rasmussen has it a point. Just like clockwork, the media narrative shifted. The race is now close.

What does this mean?

You know what I think it means?

I don’t think people change their minds like this. I don’t think a bunch of people who last week thought Obama was preferable to the tune of being up ten or 11 points, changed their minds over the weekend. But the same token, I don’t believe this silly notion that Bill Clinton at the convention saying (impression), “Hey, you know what? There’s nobody who coulda fixed this. This is such a bad mess, it’s in such bad shape, it’s gonna take our good old boy Barack here a couple more — maybe three more — years to fix this. It’s so bad, not even I could have fixed it.”

We’re told this cockamamie BS that Obama’s up ten and he’s up five and he’s up three. I just don’t believe people change their minds like that. So where are we after all this? After all this money, after all the attempts to defame Romney, after $300 million spent and how many millions given away in free media coverage, there’s no difference now than there was in July. Whatever bounce Obama had is gone, if it ever existed.

And George Will says (summarized), “Well, the American people don’t like admitting they made a mistake. They really don’t proclaim presidents failures and then vote ’em out.” Well, they do. Bill Clinton is the only Democrat since FDR to win a second term. We do throw out our failures. We do. George H. W. Bush was a one-termer. LBJ, on his own, a one-termer. He didn’t even wait. He quit before the disaster happened at the polls.

George Will says that the difference this time is Obama is African-American. He’s an affirmative action hire. And the American people, so goes the theory, are big-hearted and may want to give the first black president in history a second chance because we’re really big-hearted. See, I don’t see that working a second time. Not when people balance four more years of this disaster and its impact on their kids and grandkids.