RUSH: I want to get back to the audio sound bites. Wednesday night at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard, it happens every four years, the campaign managers and other members of the campaign staff of both major party campaigns gather for a postmortem on the election and how the winners did it and what the losers think they learned, and it’s usually very polite.
The Republicans know very well how to lose, and they know how to be very civil in defeat. And so it generally goes without consequence or event. We seldom even hear about this every-four-year event. It actually takes place over a couple of days. It has an audience of students and faculty and other big time donors at Harvard.
Well, this year’s was a little different because the Republicans won and it was the Democrats, and particularly the Hillary campaign staff, which lost. Now, the Clinton campaign, you must understand something about the Clintons, and it’s true of Obama, and it’s true of most Democrats. They are always in campaign mode. Even after they win elections, they stay in campaign mode in terms of how they reach people.
Clinton remained in campaign mode the first years of his first term. Obama still is in campaign mode. The Limbaugh Theorem explains it. We’ve had eight years of Obama and he still isn’t being held accountable for the horrible policies that he has implemented because he continues to portray himself as not attached to them. He’s still fighting these mysterious, powerful forces trying to stop him, yet he’s the president. Obamacare is his. The stimulus is his. The economy is his. And yet he still treats it as though it’s being run by others and he’s still fighting them and he’s running into obstacles.
But now the roles have been reversed, and this thing at Harvard last night blew up because the Hillary campaign is livid that they lost, and they think they lost because Trump sent out bird whistles, dog whistles, whatever, to the white supremacists out there, and the white supremacists are the ones that came out of the shadows, not the illegal immigrants, the white supremacists came out of the shadows and they got their hoses and they got their whatever else and they started beating up on Democrats and poor Hillary.
So they’ve still got this on their brain. Jennifer Palmieri and Joel Benenson and all these people on Hillary’s side just can’t come to grips with the fact that they lost. Everybody was telling them, the media, everybody telling them they’re gonna win in a landslide, Trump’s a buffoon, look at his campaign staff, a bunch of nobody’s and know-nothings. Looks at his supporters, a bunch of white supremacist goombahs. They’re in utter denial.
So there was no civility, there was no sophistication, there was nothing but raw resentment and anger on the part of the Hillary campaign staff. Jennifer Palmieri going after Kellyanne Conway and the first sound bite is a discussion of Steve Bannon and what a reprobate the Clinton people think he is and how dare you have somebody like that on your team. How dare you campaign on white supremacism. Jennifer Palmieri starts it off.
PALMIERI: If providing a platform for white supremacists makes me a brilliant strategist, uh, a brilliant tactician, I am glad to have lost.
CONWAY: That is just crap.
PALMIERI: I am more proud of Hillary Clinton’s alt-right speech than any other moment on the campaign —
CONWAY: Wow.
PALMIERI: — because she had the courage to stand up. I would rather lose than win the way you guys did.
CONWAY: No, you wouldn’t.
PALMIERI: Yes.
CONWAY: No, you wouldn’t.
PALMIERI: Yes, yes.
CONWAY: That’s very clear today. No, you wouldn’t, respectfully. How exactly did we win? Go for it, Jen. How exactly did we win? I’d like to know. Because I sacrificed the last four months of my life to do it, excuse me, and we did it. And we did it by looking at the schedule and looking at, yes, the electoral map of 270 because that’s how you win the presidency.
RUSH: Jennifer Palmieri, were you able to understand all that with the cross-talk? Okay. Well, let me run through some of it because if I hadn’t had the transcript here I wouldn’t have understood half of that. But she starts out by saying, “If providing a platform for white supremacists makes me a brilliant tactician –” She’s insulting Kellyanne Conway and Conway says, “That’s just crap.”
And Palmieri says, “I’m glad to have lost. I’m more proud of Hillary Clinton’s alt-right speech than any other moment in the campaign.”
Conway goes, “Wow,” and Palmieri, “because she had the courage to stand up. I would rather lose than win the way you guys did.”
Conway said, “No, you wouldn’t.”
“Yes, I would.”
“No, you wouldn’t.”
“Yes, yes.”
“It’s very clear today you wouldn’t, respectfully. I’m sorry, how exactly did we win? Go for it, Jen. How exactly did we win? I’d like to know, because I sacrificed the last four months of my life to do it, excuse me, and we did it. We did it by looking at –” Anyway, they are livid, white supremacy. Hillary’s alt-right speech. Does anybody remember this alt-right speech that she gave? To tell you how out of touch these people are, they made an alt-right speech. The alt-right is a manufactured movement in their head, in their minds.
The alt-right, I couldn’t tell you one if there was one standing in this room. The alt-right is one of these Democrat manufactured groups of people and they do it every election. Some segment of conservatism, conservatism in general is bad, and it’s racist and sexist, but then like the alt-right, wow, that’s where the white supremacists and the Nazis are, yeah. And so Hillary went out and gave a speech condemning them, I guess, and Palmieri said it was the proudest moment of the campaign. And it continued. Here’s Kellyanne Conway picking up this next bite.
CONWAY: Do you think I ran a campaign where white supremacists had a platform? Are you gonna look me in the face and tell me that?
Unidentified Man: You guys are pathetic.
CONWAY: Really? And that’s why you lost? Do you think you could have just had a decent message for the white working-class voters? You think this woman, who has nothing in common with —
PALMIERI: I’m not saying that’s why you won, but that’s the kind of campaign that was run.
CONWAY: We flipped over 200 counties that President Obama won and Donald Trump just won, you think that’s because of what you just said or because people aren’t ready for a woman president? Really? How about it’s Hillary Clinton, she doesn’t connect with people? How about they have nothing in common with her?
RUSH: She’s taking Palmieri to school. You had a lousy candidate, you’ve got a candidate who’s arrogant and aloof and didn’t even campaign in states she thought she was gonna be coronated in. She thinks she’s better than everybody else. She’s running around calling people that didn’t vote for her deplorables and this kind of thing. Jennifer, could it possibly be that Hillary Clinton just doesn’t connect with people, that she just doesn’t relate to people, that Hillary Clinton doesn’t have anything in common with anybody?
Did it ever strike you, Jennifer, that maybe she’s a lousy candidate? She’s now lost two times in a row, is the message that Conway was sending. But to the Clinton camp, the campaign’s never over. It’s gonna continue ’cause then you’re raising money for the foundation. She’s floating the fact she might run again in 2020. It’s all about raising more money. And they have to keep this alive, so Hillary got cheated. Hillary got defeated by the alt-right or by white supremacism or what have you. And they continue to lie to themselves, as does the entire Democrat Party.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: Let’s go to back to more from Harvard and the dust-up between Jennifer Palmieri and Kellyanne Conway. When we left off, Conway had just explained how they won the presidency. They flipped over 200 counties, and she explained, “Did you ever think, Jennifer, that maybe the problem is that people just don’t like your candidate, that Hillary doesn’t connect with people, that maybe people don’t have anything in common with Hillary, that maybe they see Hillary as a man?”
So up next is Robby Mook, who was the Clinton campaign manager, and he gets into it. I guess this was during the Q&A? No, it’s during the discussion, but there’s an unidentified guy who gets into this somehow. Anyway, let’s listen. It will be self-explanatory.
MOOK: I would just say Hillary did win the popular vote.
MAN: (scoffs) Oh, okay.
MOOK: So we’re talking about a majority of the country. I’m just —
MAN: But she didn’t win.
CONWAY: Why does this matter?
MOOK: No, no, just purely factual.
CONWAY: He was a better candidate; that’s how he won.
Woman: Okay.
Conway: We’re going to talk — keep talking about the popular — (crosstalk) Wait, I’m sorry —
Benenson: If you want to go back to the wrong-track number —
Conway: I don’t. I just want to go back to the 270 or the 306 that we won because that’s how you win the presidency and we did it.
RUSH: Right. So again, they’re falling back on the irrelevancy. “Well, the popular vote people love Hillary more than Trump. She got more of the popular vote.” Yeah, well, that’s not how you win the presidency, you dummkopfs. You get 270 electoral votes, and we got 306. Kellyanne now explains how Republicans crushed Democrats all over the country. This is the thing that I don’t think they’ve come to grips with yet. They know it. But I don’t think that they fully realize this. The day they do, it’s gonna be a different day.
They have been shellacked, folks, they are no longer — when you get right down to it, the Democrat Party, in one election — stop and think of this — up until nine o’clock election night, everybody who matters in Washington — Republican, Democrat, pollster, consultant, media — Hillary wins in a landslide, Trump has no coattails, the Democrats are gonna win the Senate, they’re close to winning the House back, they’re gonna keep the White House for three terms. It’s gonna be nirvana.
Then the actual count comes in and not only does that not happen, Trump wins, Hillary loses, they don’t get anywhere near the House. They’ve lost the Senate. They’ve lost 1,200 seats in the last three elections. They don’t have a national party, just one election. And in this next bite, Kellyanne Conway is pointing this out to them.
Conway: And there was nothing that said the road to popular vote. Hey guys, we won. You don’t have to respond.
Palmieri: Okay, there you go.
Conway: I mean, seriously.
Benenson: No.
Conway: Hold on. Why is there no mandate? You’ve lost 60 congressional seats since President Obama got there. You lost more than a dozen Senators, a dozen Governors. 1,000 state legislative seats.
Benenson: We’re talking about this election, Kellyanne.
Conway: No, no. You said there’s no mandate.
RUSH: No, no. That was Benenson. “We’re talking about this election, Kellyanne.” See, they’re in permanent campaign mode, and they haven’t come to grips with the fact that they lost. It was stolen from them, or the alt-right did something or the white supremacists came up and did something. They didn’t lose. They won the popular vote. They’re still in denial. And Kellyanne’s pointing out, you people say we don’t have a mandate? You don’t have a party. You’ve lost a thousand legislative seats. You only have five states.
Democrats, folks, only have five states where they have the governorship and the state legislature, five. It’s actually four, because the fifth state they get the advantage with a tie. It’s literally four states out of 50, 57 if you’re Obama. Four states where they have the governorship and both houses of the legislature. That’s it. They have lost seats. They are not gonna win the House and Senate back any time soon. They don’t have a prayer. Even if the Republicans implode, the numbers just work against them. They got too many seats that they have to defend.
They can’t stop Trump. They are in the exact position that the Republicans were in in 2009 and 2010 with Obama. The only tool the Democrats have is in the Senate, and it’s the filibuster. But outside of that, they can’t stop anything. It’s why everybody’s so confused why they reelected Pelosi. I mean, Pelosi personifies this party’s repudiation. Pelosi personifies what people detest and dislike about this party.
They don’t have anything. How one election has exposed the true dire straits of the Democrat Party. It really is profound. But they’re sitting there thinking they really won. They won the popular vote. “We’re only talking about this election Kellyanne. You don’t have a mandate, you don’t have a mandate.”
Trump has more of a mandate than any president since Ronald Reagan. Obama did not run on anything. Obama ran on (Obama impression) “I’ll be whatever you want me be. If you want me to reduce the sea levels, I’ll do it. If you want me to cool the planet, I’ll cool the planet. You want health care, I’ll do it.” Reagan had an agenda, three agenda items. George W. Bush had some. But Trump, because people weren’t listening, Trump has the longest agenda item list I have seen in modern American politics. And he keeps talking about it. He has a huge mandate and they’re still in denial and do not even know it yet.