RUSH: Well, here we are, folks. This is it. This is the day, but it may not be the day that we actually know what happens. It could be awhile, or we could know tonight or early in the morning. But, man, there are so many factors here that are… Well, you’d have to say unprecedented. One of those is the number of early votes. In Texas, Arizona, and I forget… There are three states where the early votes are already over the total votes in 2014, in the midterms in 2014.

You don’t compare this turnout to 2016. That’s a presidential turnout. Although, the turnout here is, in many places, just like a presidential turnout, except a presidential turnout has, you know, top-ticket impact. You’re voting for one person, either Republican, Democrat or, you know, for trailing libertarian, the Green Party. But absent that, the early vote totals and the voter intensity is something that we haven’t seen in many years and maybe in some of our lifetimes.

So the question is… And, by the way, greetings. It’s great to have you. Rush Limbaugh, back at 4 a.m. today. I got a couple hours of shuteye and right back here at the EIB Southern Command. The question today is this early voting. Will the intensity of Election Day voting match early voting or will the turnout today be not so hot? You know, you don’t know these things. Some people think early voting is an indication that total turnout is going to be record, over the top.

Some people think that early voting could mean that Election Day voting will not be what it usually is and therefore the total turnout may not be all that different. We don’t know. We don’t know much of anything yet. But the interesting thing to ask for me is, let’s look at the early vote and let’s make an assumption. Let’s assume the early vote is indicative of a huge turn out today all over the country. Let’s say that this turnout today happens to break or get close to records for a midterm turnout.

Focusing first on the early vote, who is it? Is it people ticked off at the Kavanaugh hearings, ticked off at the caravan, ticked off at the left? Because, man, they gave a lot of people a lot of reasons to be mad. They woke up a lot of people. I’m telling you, people — and the Drive-Bys are downplaying this as evidenced by their desire to get Trump talking about the economy, and Trump made an amazing gamble not doing that.

You know, Trump could have put out his own version of “Morning in America” ads and tried to ride the economy to the midterms, but I think Trump realized he’s not on the ballot, even though he is. His name is not on the ballot, but he’s driving everything today. Donaldus Magnus is driving everything left and right, Republican and Democrat. So the question is: Of these early voters, who’s really ticked off or who’s really enthusiastic or who is really jazzed and wired?

Is it the Democrats, who have been jazzed and wired and ticked off for two years because they still haven’t accepted that they lost the election in 2016? If you look at that, they think they got jobbed in 2016 because they think the Russians stole the election. You go back to 2001, 2000, they think they got jobbed when the Supreme Court stole the election in the Florida recount away from Algore. They think that they have been getting jobbed on elections left and right — and that if they lose this one, there are a bunch of them predicting total meltdowns.

Ezra Klein, the former wunderkind at the Washington Post, now as Axios or somewhere, actually said — and I’ve never seen this. I thought this guy understood civics. He said if the Democrats lose the House but have more total votes than the Republicans in House races, then you better batten down your house and you better protect yourself because the Democrats are gonna be loaded for bear.

Would somebody explain to me where that metric comes from? You know, there is no Electoral College in House votes. So what difference does total vote mean in House races? These are district-by-district races. But it just serves as an indication of how people have become warped in their thinking. They are convinced that we have become a socialist country already and that they’ve been jobbed out of elections which would prove that.

They think they have succeeded in converting a majority of Americans to believing and wanting socialism — pure, unabridged socialism. They think this election is gonna be the election that shows that 2016 was a gigantic mistake, that people got caught up in emotion and did not vote what they really intended. Nobody could have really wanted Donald Trump to be president. This is how Ezra Klein, the media, and the left think.

This election, particularly the House races, is where the left today is totally invested in two things: That 2016 was a mistake or that the Russians did steal it. And that this election is going to prove what has been the case for a while: That America is socialist, has been for a while, and is going to continue to be. The Republicans, on the other hand — conservatives — have just as many reasons to be ticked off. The basic unfairness of the playing field of politics — and that would be the Drive-By Media. The basic unfairness…

You know, for example… Let me give an example. Television networks, cable news networks are all outraged that Sean Hannity appeared on stage with the Trumpster last night in Cape Girardeau at the final rally. Apparently, Hannity had tweeted that he was just there to do his show and interview Trump but that he was never gonna appear on stage. And then Judge Jeanine Pirro was there, and she also was called up by Trump. So they’re saying that this is outrageous.

(sputtering) “These people are journalists and they have no business being up there, and Hannity’s a fraud and Judge Jeanine’s a fraud. Fox is fraudulent,” and so forth. Are you telling me that if anybody at CNN had been invited up to the stage by Obama or Hillary, they will not have gone? They would have dreamed about it. They do dream about it! If Bill Clinton had called them up, is there any doubt where their allegiances lie?

The Drive-By Media is so invested with two things: Love and adoration for the Democrat Party and sheer dislike for us. That playing field, more and more people — average, ordinary Americans — see this unfairness, and it’s just basic unfairness. It may sound naive or simplistic to say, but it’s basic unfairness. If people look at the media as the referees, this is a rigged game. There’s no two ways about it. With Donald Trump doing so well, with Trump doing amazing things — restoring American greatness, restoring the American economy, restoring America’s purpose and dominance in the world…

And to see that under assault each and every day by the mainstream media in an alliance with the Democrat Party, it ticks me off! I don’t know how many other people it ticks off, but it ticks me off. And if nothing else, it would get me to vote. But that’s me. And I’m sure it’s a lot of you. How widespread is this perception of unfairness? Then you add to that specifics, like this whole Kavanaugh case which we now know was a total fraud.

Many of us knew it from the moment Dianne Feinstein read the letter that Christine Blasey Ford didn’t want to go public but that Kavanaugh had done whatever he’d done. We knew that this was a Democrat political operation from the get-go, just like this phony dossier describing the Trump campaign’s collusion with the Russians. We’ve known that these are phony Democrat operations done in association, compliance with the Drive-By Media. There are two additional women who have been… Grassley claims in a report that they just out-and-out lied about Kavanaugh.

Now, a lot of people were ticked off about that. A lot of people were awakened by that. Are they among the early voters? We have no way of knowing. Then this caravan business. This is just a continuation of the issue that actually got Trump elected, and that is illegal immigration. The caravan obviously looked like… We don’t know, but it looked like another Democrat, left-wing operation. Its intention was to get here by now, but it isn’t anywhere near here by now — and of course, it’s falling apart and it’s diverting and people are leaving it and so forth.

But it was a visible microcosm of illegal immigration writ large.

Now, this is an issue — illegal immigration — that has been a front-and-center, hot burner issue for Republican voters for over 10 years. This is not something that Donald Trump invented, this illegal immigration. Look at the number of times Republican administrations sought “comprehensive immigration reform,” meaning amnesty. George W. Bush wanted it for all eight years. Then Barack Hussein O tried to get it. At every turn, it was people like you in this audience over the years writing, calling, faxing, emailing members of Congress telling them not to do it.

You killed it, and they keep coming at it. They keep trying for it. They keep trying to go for amnesty. They keep trying any number of ways. They can flood the border. The caravan’s an example. I don’t believe that the energy that exists among people who look at this really as a rule-of-law issue, No. 1… It’s rule of law. It has nothing to do with the race or the gender or the skin color of any of these people. It has to do with preserving America.

We have an immigration system. Use it! You want to become an American? File for immigration and citizenship and follow the rules! The Democrat Party wants to get rid of all that. They want these people admitted the minute they get to the border. This has not lessened in intensity. The caravan comes along and focuses attention on what this issue is. Trump made a big gamble to focus on that during the final week or two weeks of the campaign.

I’m sure his thinking is, “Hey, it got me elected; I’m gonna run with what brought me. I’m gonna dance with the ones who brought me.” But he didn’t forget the economy. He talked about the economy at every rally. There just weren’t a lot of TV ads about it. So who do you think is more fired up among the early voters? Is it frustrated Democrats who think they won in 2016, cannot accept the fact that they lost in 2016? Is the Democrats livid that the Russians stole election for Trump and seemingly Trump got away with it?

Are they ticked off that Mueller hasn’t issued his report that would nail Trump? They’re angry in general anyway, from enraged women… I mean, every constituency group of the Democrat Party is known and identified by whatever it is that angers them. There’s nothing positive about them. There’s nothing upbeat. There’s nothing infectious about them. They’re just outraged. They are angry. And they became a bunch of intimidating mobs during the Kavanaugh hearings.

So what effect did that have on early voters? Well, one thing we know is that the immigration issue does convert suburban women from Democrat and Republican. Did it this time? Are the early voters people who know full well the meaning of this election in terms of the Trump agenda continuing or being paralyzed? Or is the early voting made up of people just so ticked off that Trump won, ticked off that they haven’t been able to get rid of Trump, ticked off that we have not officially sanctioned ourselves as socialists?

We are going to find that out. Look, I know a lot of you are gonna try to call and say, “Hey, I early voted and I…” I could talk to 15,000 people today. We wouldn’t know the answer to my questions, folks, because I can’t talk to everybody, and talking to 10 people, 15,000 people (which I couldn’t do anyway) would be nothing but anecdotal. There wouldn’t be any way to project from what I hear. So we just have to wait and see, and that’s what the other side is doing too.

Now, Pelosi’s out there saying she’s guaranteeing she’s gonna be the speaker — and when she’s the speaker, she’s gonna start packing a punch, a powerful punch. And many people on the left are just dead certain they’ve already won. Some on the left, “Mmm’yeah, maybe, but maybe not.” People on the right, you have some that are as adamant that there’s gonna be a red wave, no blue wave. Some are hedging their bets, and some on the right are scared to death that this is going to be a massacre today.

There are some who believe… You know, it’s not hard to believe, if you watch with any regularity the Drive-By Media — and this goes back now to the unfairness of the playing field that we’re in. Yeah, it’s unfair, but we have to deal with it, but still it’s unfair. If you have a steady diet of watching the media and you’re a Republican, it would be totally understandable if you are completely pessimistic. ‘Cause they have done their level best to convince you and your candidates don’t have a prayer.

And that started, in essence, last December when the first generic ballot polls were released and the Democrats had a 13-point edge. From that moment on, the Democrats have won the House. So Republican pessimism — which is standard and commonplace. You can find plenty of it. You can even find conservative commentators who are good conservative commentators saying, “I gotta a bad feeling about. Just got a bad. I just I don’t think the economy’s that big a deal anymore.” You know what, folks? There are a lot of people who been questioning:

Why isn’t this great economy an automatic two or three points for any Republican? Because it used to be back pocket issues, the economy — used to be — almost the sole determining factor. I’ll tell you what it is in part. In part, because it’s there are now so many Americans that get something from the government, some money, somehow — a food stamp, check, welfare, whatever. Over 50% of Americans now get some kind of subsidy, and they probably are not dumb. If they hear the tax cuts are gonna happen, they think that might be less money for them.

So there’s that.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: I just checked the email. Somebody said, “Who is this conservative that you say is saying they feel very bad?” Well, there’s a couple of them. I saw Steve Hilton on Fox this morning. He’s the Brit made famous during the Brexit vote there who has now come to the United States. He works for Fox. He has, I think, his own Sunday show. He was just being honest. He said he’s got a bad feeling about today — and his bad feeling, he said, is rooted in a belief that he just can’t get rid of.

And that is that the elites, the coastal elites (the Obama coalition, essentially) just are so loaded for bear for revenge over what happened in 2016 that there’s nothing that’s gonna hold ’em back. He says they just… He can’t prove it. It’s just a feeling, a gut feeling that he has that the anger and the disappointment, the shock, the disbelief that Trump actually won this thing has had them so wired and motivated and angry and ticked off that they have been counting the days until they get to vote on this day or early vote.

So that’s one that I heard. I think (sigh) Republican pessimism is all too common and it’s easy to be pessimistic. But we’re all… I think human beings are hard-wired for pessimism. Optimism is hard. Optimism requires somebody helping you be. Most people are not self-starters. Most people need to be coached, pushed, inspired. It’s just the way we are. It’s easy to be negative, because in being negative, you can then take routes to blame people other than you for whatever your plight is.

Being negative, you know, it sells too. I can’t tell you the number of times that people talk to me, “Ah, was talking to somebody” and litany of negative things. And it just sounded to easy to believe. And then somebody at the same time, “Well, how about this?” And rattled off a bunch of positive things that could hap. “Ah, that can’t happen, can’t happen.” So it’s a natural thing that I don’t think means anything. I mean, if natural pessimism exists before events are even known, I don’t think it, by itself, is an indication.