RUSH: You know what I think it’s fascinating to do? Both parties, political professionals think they’re on the verge of screwing up. Both party political professionals have people that are talking to people in media, feeding them narratives and stories. Republicans are worried that they’re losing suburbia. The Democrats are paranoid they are losing rural America.

I’m going to compare some of these stories today. I’m gonna share with you what the Democrat panic-oriented stories are, what the Republican panic-related stories are. And you can decide with, of course, a little assistance from me, which of these two different takes happens to be closer to the truth.

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RUSH: I’m gonna start doing the A-B, side-by-side comparison, left-wing Democrat political professionals, what they think their problems are, and then right-wing political professionals, Republicans and what they think their problems are.

Jill Biden has already weighed in. Jill Biden, the wife of Plugs. (paraphrasing) “You may like another candidate better, you may like another candidate better than you like my husband, but you have to beat Trump. Maybe you have to swallow a little bit.” This is Plugs’ wife saying this on the campaign trail.

Quote, “Your candidate might be better on, I don’t know, healthcare than Joe is, but you’ve got to look at who’s going to win this election, and maybe you have to swallow a little bit and say, ‘Okay, I personally like so and so better,’ but your bottom line has to be that we have to beat Trump.”

His own wife is out there admitting that he’s a dud and that infinitely more people are probably liked better than her husband is. But when it comes to beating Trump, there’s no other choice. This is precisely why we want Plugs to get the nomination. But I wouldn’t be disappointed if half of that field got the nomination.

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RUSH: Let’s get started on this A-B, side-by-side comparison. And let me set it as a prelude by telling you that the Republican contribution in this side-by-side comparison is filled with a lot of very interesting, salient points. The Republican story that I’m gonna share with you is written by Ron Nehring. He’s an opinion contributor at TheHill.com.

He’s former chairman of the California Republican Party. He was the campaign spokesman in 2016 for Ted Cruz. And he’s trying to warn everybody what you’ve already been warned, that California is what needs to be seen as the future of America if the Democrats prevail, not as an outlier.

Now, you who have listened to this program regularly have heard that take. My opinion that California is the model for what the left hopes to accomplish nationwide. And the fundamental take from what’s happened to California is there is no Republican Party of any substance or consequence and how it happened, how it’s brought about. So that’s his take.

“Three Real Problems Republicans Need to Address to Win in 2020.” Here are the three, but this is just setting the table. “Republicans have not won a presidential election in difficult economic times in 40 years. Republicans are hemorrhaging support in suburbia. And California is the canary in the coal mine, not the outlier.”

He says, “Here is a list of personalities that for the big picture may be fun to talk about but do not matter,” a hill of beans in terms of winning reelection to the White House in 2020. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ihlan Omar, Jeffrey Epstein and related conspiracy theories, the Clintons, Robert Mueller, James Comey, Julian Assange and Roger Stone. Any focus on any of that is a total waste of time and is of no consequence and no help in reelecting Trump to the White House in 2020.”

He says, “If you are a Republican activist, candidate or elected official, one or more of these names is lurking somewhere in your Facebook or Twitter news feed right now. And not one of them matter. Here are the three things that do matter. They are more complicated, strategic and impactful,” but they’re not nearly as fun to talk about.

“Republicans have not won a presidential election in difficult economic times in 40 years. Republicans are hemorrhaging support in suburbia. And California is the canary in the coal mine.” Remember, this is Mr. Nehring, who was the chairman of the California Republican Party. Now, again, that’s setting the table. Details to come.

The Democrat side of this from Politico. “Dems Fear Another Rural Wipeout Will Reelect Trump — Pitches by some 2020 candidates aren’t yet translating into a broad conversation about the needs of rural voters.”

Now, I find this fascinating. The Republican guru thinks that the Republicans are gonna lose if they don’t fix the hemorrhaging in suburbia. The Democrats think they’re gonna lose if they don’t find a way to become attractive to the people Hillary Clinton called deplorables. And of course there’s more details to this.

The other Democrat piece on this is from TheHill.com. “Soft Levels of Support Mark This Year’s Democratic Primary.” And this story is about how nobody in the Democrat field is lighting anything up. Trump is out-fundraising them in blue states like the details we had for the state of Washington and the city of Seattle yesterday. That in New Hampshire Fauxcahontas couldn’t draw more than 700 people. Biden drew 30 people in New Hampshire the same night Trump drew 12,000 inside, another 12,000 outside.

Although it must be stated, Fauxcahontas had some kind of event in Minnesota and looks like there’s 12,000 people there. That’s what the story says. And the picture would provide evidence for that. But this concern is that there just isn’t anybody lighting it up. There’s nobody generating any excitement, nobody in the Democrat side that is making a connection with voters in the same way that Trump is.

So it’s interesting, to me anyway, that both sides think they are in deep trouble because of certain demographics or certain swaths of voters. I think it is highly illustrative of how political professionals go about the job. I think it’s very illustrative of how Trump won.

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RUSH: Kamala Harris. This kind of dovetails with the second Democrat story, “Soft Levels of Support Mark This Year’s Democratic Primary.” Now, you get 20 or 23 people with their hat in the ring, a bunch of them are not gonna last. And it’s gonna start thinning out pretty quickly here.

But the point of this story in the Politico that “Pitches by some 2020 candidates aren’t yet translating into a broad conversation about the needs of rural voters.” And soft levels of support, “Pollsters say one of the most striking characteristics of this cycle’s Democratic presidential primary is the relatively soft support for top-tier candidates, even after an intense focus on the race by the national media.

“This almost certainly reflects the party’s desperation to find a candidate who can defeat President Trump after its faithful were shocked by Democrat Hillary Clinton’s loss in 2016.”

Do you realize how they are still shell-shocked over that and how they are still governed by that? And it’s not so much that they can’t believe Hillary lost as it is they can’t believe Trump won.

I don’t think anybody in that party really thought Hillary Clinton was the greatest candidate. She was gonna be a great president as far as they were concerned in terms of advancing this wacko agenda continuing the work that Obama had started in transforming America and accomplishing this glass ceiling barrier of first female president.

But as a person, Hillary Clinton’s a dud. And she didn’t even have a connection. She didn’t even have a bond with enough voters in the Democrat Party to win. What has really stunned them is that somebody, who in their minds had no idea what he was doing, and in their minds may not have even wanted to win won and won big.

Now, these people are filled with an insatiable ego. They need to think they are adored. They need to believe they are appreciated politically as provider. They think of themselves as parents of this gigantic family, and they’re looking for appreciation from every voter for what the Democrats have meant to them personally. What they have, what obstacles they help overcome. And that’s what is meant when they say there doesn’t seem to be any strong level of support.

What they really mean is that there str not too many people, even Democrat voters, who are tightly connected in terms of human sense, appreciation, gratitude, hope, all of this, that not one of these candidates is inspiring any of that, when that happens to be one of the primary approaches Democrats have always used to connect to people. “We love you. We care about you. We’re going to protect you against those evil Republicans and conservatives and those Christians.”

They have believed from the beginning of this primary process that any one of these people could beat Donald Trump. They still believe that Trump is going to be beaten as much as they thought he was going to be beaten in 2016. That’s what they can’t come to grips with. So now they have a twofer to deal with. There is nobody in that field that generates any real excitement. And you know it as well as I do. You can see it.

Biden’s back up in front, but Joe Biden does not connect with people. His wife admits it. (imitating Jill Biden) “Hey, you know what? There may be better candidates than old Joe, but I don’t think any of them can win like Joe can.” You mean the least talented candidate is your best prospect? Is what Joe’s wife is saying.

Now we have news that one of the stars, one of the potential stars so-called African female, tough prosecutor, gonna come in on a debate with Trump, she was gonna mop the stage with Trump. Kamala Harris, star of the Senate Judiciary Committee interrogations of Kavanaugh and others, she has plummeted 12 points in the latest CNN poll.

And all that it took for this to happen, remember what it was? (interruption) Mr. Snerdley! Way to go. Tulsi Gabbard in two minutes took Kamala Harris out of the race. Two minutes! You can’t take somebody out of the race who has a deep bond or connection with voters. You can’t do that in two minutes.

Folks, this matters. This is the one advantage Trump is going to carry throughout this race. I don’t care what the issues end up being, I don’t care what the political professionals tell you, there isn’t a single one of these Democrats that is gonna come anywhere near having a connection with his or her voters that Donald Trump has with his. And that matters in ways that you cannot understand.

It’s why crowd side at rallies is a factor. It is why voter enthusiasm is a factor. It’s always been a factor in politics. Because politics is its own genre of show business. Tulsi Gabbard in two minutes blew up the entire phony narrative Kamala Harris had created about herself as a prosecutor who cares about the downtrodden, a prosecutor who cares about people of color, a prosecutor who cares about the falsely charged.

And she’s just the exact opposite. This woman is such a law and order person that she made sure people stayed in jail longer than they should have. She didn’t have any of the so-called Democrat compassion for the convicted class that the Democrats claim to have.

As for Joe Biden, his handlers are afraid to let him out in public. They are canceling appearances. They’re doing exactly what they did with Hillary. The less she was seen, the higher her numbers went. It’s the same way with Plugs. Now they’re sending Jill out there, Mrs. Biden, admitting that her husband’s health care plan is not popular with Democrats, but he isn’t, either, but maybe there’s nobody but him that can beat Trump.

And what is that health care plan, by the way, that isn’t popular with Democrats? It has a name. Obamacare. (gasping) Plugs and Obama are linked and they can’t be separated. Elizabeth Warren will be said to be surging now because of the crowd that she drew in Minnesota. She is a media creation. Kamala Harris has a glass political jaw. But all these people are media creations.

If it weren’t for the media basically being a collective PR team, writing puff piece stories about the humanity and the greatness and the compassion and the wonderfulness of these people, they couldn’t sell that on their own because these people aren’t that likable.

Stop and look at the Democrat primaries and remember all the candidates up there. Who is the most likable among them? Who do you think — well, who would you say, Mr. Snerdley, honestly now, not a trick question. Whatever you think is what you think, but who is the most likable of the candidates you have seen so far? (interruption) Tulsi. Tulsi. Exactly.

Why not Andrew Yang? What about Mayor Pete? Oh, yeah, Mayor Pete’s an angry guy, folks. He’s a bitter little guy, has to cover it up. Sometimes it leaks out. CNN poll, 2020 Democrats, Biden is 29%. That’s up seven points since June. Crazy Bernie at 15. Fauxcahontas at 14. And then it’s single digits. Mayor Pete at 5, Kamala Harris is down 12 points to 5%. Beto at 3%.

Cory Booker — there’s another one. Supposed to launch his Spartacus career from the Senate Judiciary Committee. Big, fat zero. And then there’s Julian Castro. Next year maybe Julian. Tulsi is at 2%, she’s up 1%, everybody else 1% or less. So this story on the Democrat side, Democrats fear levels of support, soft levels mark this year’s primary.

And to put this in perspective, the Democrats, because of their total loss of sense of proportion about Trump, they will never accept Trump as a legitimate winner and therefore they will never accept the truth about how he won. So they’re always gonna be misjudging everything about Trump.

The reason there are 20 Democrats running is very simple. They all are delusional. They all believe the vast majority of the country realizes the mistake it made in electing Trump. And now anybody, anybody can beat Trump. That’s why 20 of them entered the fray. Enter the fray, you get “former presidential candidate” on your resume, you get money sent to you as a candidate, you get to collect that, you get to go on cable news as an analyst, “former presidential candidate.”

Plus, you think you might actually maybe win because as a Democrat you know that nobody else in that primary’s lighting it up. But what propels them is they believe that Trump is a guaranteed loser in 2020 just like he was in 2016. Then the other half of this, Democrats fear rural wipeout. Another one will reelect Trump.

Here are the details here. This is from Politico. “As Democratic presidential candidates descended on the Iowa State Fair, a plane buzzed overhead, an ominous warning fluttering behind it on a banner: ‘Focus on Rural America.’

“Democrats hoping to win the White House in 2020 recognize how critical that advice is after 2016, when Hillary Clinton turned in strong performances in many cities and suburbs but lost,” the hick vote, which is how the Democrats look at it, not me, she lost the hick vote two to one.

What do you think rural means to these people? It means hick. It means hayseed. They’re never gonna go there. If they do, they’ll be wearing latex gloves and masks as they report from rural America. ‘Cause everybody’s a pig farmer. Shotgun, back of the pickup truck, gun rack in back window.

“The presidential primary, often dominated by cultural issues and Trump-driven hot buttons, including immigration and race,” is not helping the Democrats with rural voters. Mark Mellman, Democrat pollster, “There’s good reason to worry because the reality is this: There’s a fundamental values gap between the mainstream Democratic Party, which tends to be more socially liberal and cosmopolitan in its outlook, and rural and small-town voters.”

Well, he’s right. The Democrats have no connection with hicks. The Democrats laugh at them. The Democrats make fun of rural voters. Rural voters are one of the reasons they’re embarrassed to be American. Rural voters just disgust them. There’s no way they’re ever gonna have a connection. Point is, I don’t care what you hear, the Democrats are not confident that they’re gonna win. The political consults, professionals.

Now let’s go to the Republican side of this. And again, this is Ron Nehring, spokesman for Cruz in 2016, the former chairman of the California Republican.

“As we head deeper into the 2020 election cycle, Republican activists and leaders face serious challenges if we are to put conservative solutions into action. … With media coverage and social media attention driven by the sensational, it’s easy to get sidetracked by ‘clickbaity’ issues and personalities that pull our attention away from the real problems,” that we face.

“First, here is a list of personalities that for the big picture may be fun to talk about,” but they don’t matter. They shouldn’t gain any significant time from anybody. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ilhan Omar, Jeffrey Epstein and related conspiracy theories, the Clintons, Robert Mueller, James Comey, Julian Assange, Roger Stone, none of that, according to Mr. Nehring, is going to be a factor, and people who think that it is, people who think that continuing to remind people about the hoax, remind people about the Mueller investigation, how close we came to having a silent coup, waste of time, according to this guy’s theory.

What Republicans had better focus on if they have a prayer of winning is the economy. “Republicans have not won a presidential election in difficult economic times in 40 years. Republicans are hemorrhaging support in the suburbs, and California is the canary in the coal mine, not the outlier.”

That’s simply his way of stating what I have often said, that California is the model the Democrats have for the rest of the country. It’s not an outlier. It’s not a place abnormal. It is entirely normal when Democrat policies prevail. California is what you get. His point is that every Republican ought to be scared to death of what has happened in California policy-wise and to the Republican Party because that’s the model, that’s what the Democrats have in mind, and that’s what every policy of theirs is aimed at doing, particularly open border, illegal mass immigration.

And the next target is Texas. Turn Texas into the next California, and you have pretty much eliminated any Republican electoral chance. “With much of rural America firmly Republican and Democrats equally solid in the cities, America’s suburbs are the political battlegrounds. Recent polling shows Democrats making significant gains in suburban districts. Texas may be won or lost based on what happens in the communities outside Dallas.

“Similarly, the suburbs outside Atlanta, Cleveland, Phoenix and Philadelphia could determine in which electoral college column their respective states fall in November 2020.” Another word for the suburban vote is supposedly the educated female vote.

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RUSH: This is Deborah, Eastern Shore, Maryland, great to have you on the EIB Network. Hi.

CALLER: Hi, Rush. How are you today?

RUSH: I’m good. I’m good. Thank you very much.

CALLER: Thank you so much for taking my call. I’ve lived abroad for the past 30 years, and I’ve gotten to know the mind-set of socialists pretty well in that time period. And to see it happening now in the states —

RUSH: Right. I was gonna say, you don’t need to live abroad —

CALLER: Right.

RUSH: — to see how socialism is unfolding and how it works. It’s happening right here.

CALLER: Exactly. Well, over the past 30 years I’ve seen it seep into more of the American cultural as the years have gone by. And what I’ve come to know and as you know and as your seasoned listeners know, that the socialists, slash, Democrats, liberals, like to place blame, and one of my theories about this whole recession narrative that they’re pushing this past week or so is that they are setting up that in case, God forbid they do win the 2020 election, they will have their fallback, “Well, we told you the recession was coming. It is Trump’s fault,” just in case their policies fail completely when they are elected.

RUSH: Not “in case.” “When.”

CALLER: When.

RUSH: There isn’t any doubt now that the policies these people are espousing — Medicare for All, Medicare for illegals, health care free paid by the middle class. The programs they’re touting will cost $200 trillion dollars. There isn’t any doubt they will fail. This is all just election sloganeering. But look, your point is well taken. I think that it’s multifaceted, the strategy here. They are trying to convince as many people in the immediate short run that there is a recession and that one is coming if we’re not there yet and that Trump is causing it.

This is all about winning in 2020. Now, as an adjunct, if the recession does come, the economy slows down after they get reelected, “Well, we told you. That’s why you elected us to deal with it and so forth.” That’s a good point. But I think like this inverted curve business, the stock market down 800 points one day last week, it’s a dry run. It’s a dry run to see if they can, when we get closer to the election, actually make people think the economy is tanking when it isn’t.