RUSH: Somebody asked me last night, “Rush, since you know these people so well and you know what’s gonna happen, does it ever just get old hat and boring when it does happen and it happens exactly as you say?”

I said, “No, it’s kind of like playing golf, hitting a straight down the middle drive never gets boring.” Right, Brian? “Never gets boring. It just continues to be fun.”

Great to have you with us, folks. Here we are, three more hours straight ahead, broadcast excellence, El Rushbo at 800-282-2882. The e-mail address, ElRushbo@eibnet.us.

Let me share with you some headlines here. I have, as usual, an entirely different take on what happened last night than what you’re getting in the Drive-By Media. I’ll just ask you a series of questions as my take on this. Here are the headlines from the Drive-Bys. This is all conventional wisdom, this is all — I don’t know — so utterly predictable.

“Narrow Win In New Hampshire Bolsters Sanders’ Frontrunner Status.” All right. Just bank all this, and we’re gonna come back to it. “Is It Already Too Late For The Establishment To Stop Bernie?” What establishment? You mean they’re admitting there’s a Democrat establishment? And is it too late to stop Crazy Bernie? “Why Joe Biden’s Campaign Is Collapsing.”

Grab audio sound bite number 1. I want to play for you something I said back on May 1st, 2019 when Joe Biden first got in this race. Some of you will remember this.

RUSH ARCHIVE: I’m gonna whisper this to you ‘cause I don’t want it to get out. (whispering) You just keep this between you and me, okay? Turn your radios up a little bit so you can hear this, ‘cause I don’t want this to get out. Don’t anybody tweet this. Don’t anybody put it on Facebook. But old Joe is not gonna be able to handle the rigors. It ain’t gonna be long, folks, and he’s gonna have to pull out.

RUSH: Now, what did I know that these wizards of smart in mainstream media news didn’t know? Where in his track record has Joe Biden ever won anything in any presidential contest he’s entered? I’m not trying to be mean. I don’t want anybody to misunderstand this. This is just fact-based analysis, intelligence guided by experience or vice-versa.

There is no way Joe Biden was ever going to be the nominee of the Democrat Party. It wasn’t gonna happen. Because it hasn’t happened when he’s tried before. He hasn’t done anything to erase the negatives that happened in the past. The fact that he was Obama’s vice president and Obama won’t even endorse him and Obama’s out telling other Democrat candidates that Biden doesn’t even have a connection with voters.

You know, at Obama’s office in Washington, he’s been receiving Democrat candidates. They’re coming in, they’re asking him for advice and so forth. And he’s been handing it out. But that’s another questionable thing. I mean, the people Obama endorses lose as well.

But some of these Democrat candidates are reporting that when they went in to seek advice and counsel from Obama, that Obama would say things (imitating Obama), “You know, when in 2008 when I went into Iowa, I had a deep connection with Iowa voters, but I’ve lost that connection. They don’t last forever in politics.” He said, “Let me tell you somebody who never had it, and that’s Joe Biden.”

Now, what he meant was, Biden didn’t do a thing to help Obama get elected, in Obama’s mind. But you know where Biden was valuable to Obama? And I guess this doesn’t count for much. You can’t find anybody more loyal to Barack Obama than Joe Biden was. Whenever Obama was in any trouble, whenever they needed somebody to stick up for Obama, his character, whatever it was, they brought Biden out at the convention or wherever. And there was nobody better to sing the virtues and praises of Obama than Biden, and he did it. And this is his reward.

It’s a cutthroat business. But he was never going to be the nominee. “Well, what about all the polls, Rush? What about all the polls the past year that show him as the frontrunner?” Yeah, what about those polls? What did they mean? Another thing that I have been attempting to get people to pay attention to, and that is ignore all of these polls that are taken months before any kind of an election because they don’t matter. That’s not their purpose.

These people that had Biden as the frontrunner for the last five months ought to be getting out of business by now, don’t you think? I have never believed that Biden was going to be the nominee. And I have made that abundantly clear on many occasions. It has nothing to do with what I think of him. It has nothing to do with whether I like him or not. Just straight-up-and-down political analysis that, frankly, isn’t hard.

But these people in the Drive-By Media get all caught up in the fact that he’s an ex-vice president, and that’s the number-one qualifier. He was Obama’s vice president. By golly, by gosh, that’s who the establishment Democrats ought to want. Well, they don’t, and they never did. And why did Biden get in in the first place? He had to be dragged into this. Does anybody remember this? Biden didn’t really want to do it. They had to drag him in there, and that’s ’cause of Crazy Bernie.

Now, just stick with me here. I’m gonna go through the rest of these headlines. “Why Biden’s Campaign Is Collapsing –” I have an answer to that one, right here. This story is from Ben Domenech in the New York Post. But let me tell you why this is great. Never Trump Republicans were secretly working on the Biden campaign. Did you know this?

“Emails obtained by The Post show that two top staffers from Kasich’s failed, 2016 primary campaign and Ohio’s former GOP chairman, a Kasich ally, were among those involved in efforts to boost support for the former vice president in last week’s botched Iowa caucus and Tuesday’s New Hampshire primary.

“Documents attached to one email show the group planned to identify and target at least 5,000 Democrats ‘from the conservative voter base’ in each of Iowa’s four congressional districts, then use that information in ‘suppression, persuasion and GOTV [get out the vote] efforts.’”

So you had a bunch of Never Trumpers, a bunch of Republican Never Trumpers, including Kasich’s people, trying to help Biden get elected, trying to help Biden get the nominee ’cause they can’t stand Trump, they hate Trump, they can’t find a way to get rid of Trump, so they figured the best way to get rid of Trump is Biden. So these Never Trumpers struck out again, demonstrating once again they don’t have a feel for the electorate, they don’t have a feel for the American people. They don’t have a feel for what their own party voters want.

Never Trump Republicans helping Joe Biden? Why, you want to talk about the kiss of death, and it happened. I find it funny. I find it immensely satisfying that a bunch of nose-out-of-joint Never Trump Republicans who have it in their heads that they’ve gotta hate Trump for reasons they can’t even enunciate anymore, despite every supposed policy they told us all those years they endorsed now being implemented and working, that doesn’t matter to them. They gotta get rid of the guy who’s implementing everything they’ve ever believed or said they believed. And they have been working to undermine Donald Trump since the campaign of 2016.

Now they’ve been working to undermine Trump’s reelection. They probably had a lot to do with all the Russia impeachment hoax stuff. Now they’ve been helping Biden? Is it any wonder the guy went down the tubes? Of course, Biden was capable of that all by himself. But with the assistance of John Kasich and his campaign team, Biden’s failure was thus guaranteed and assured.

There’s another headline here. Let’s see. “Biden Would Show Selfless Patriotism by Quitting the Race.” That is Peter Funt, USA Today. These Democrats have the strangest definitions of patriotism. “Biden Would Show Selfless Patriotism by Quitting the Race.” Let me tell you something. I’m gonna tell you people one thing here. Joe Biden still has value to the Democrats that they may not realize, ’cause I’ll tell you, if Biden…

Well, Biden’s finished, and you know what that means? That means that a significant percentage of the black vote is legitimately up for grabs by Donald Trump. That’s what that means, and that is gonna dawn on these people the minute it’s official that Biden’s done. It’s official now, but it’s not official ’cause he’s still in there. But he’s done. But once it’s official — after Nevada, South Carolina — you watch.

Panic is gonna set in. Here’s Byron York, Washington Examiner: “What Happened to Elizabeth Warren?” What happened to Elizabeth Warren? Can you say she tried to say she’s an Indian? What do you mean, “What Happened to Elizabeth Warren?” And then she said that her kids didn’t go to private school when they did. She can’t tell the truth. What happened to Elizabeth Warren?

How about “you didn’t build that”? What happened to Elizabeth Warren? The question is, why was she ever viable? Why did Elizabeth Warren ever…? Now, maybe within the context of the Democrat nomination, you can say that she thought… These are people that get caught up in their own created media narratives that are oftentimes (sigh), well, created absent any consideration of public opinion.

Or maybe they calculate public opinion by looking at polls which have Biden as the clear frontrunner with nobody even close. There’s a lot less gut being utilized by political analysts. Let’s see. “Amy Klobuchar Is the Thinking Moderate Democrats’ Candidate.” That’s in Vox. You know they’ve got a word for what happened to Klobuchar? “Klobmentum.” That sounds like a constipation drug you might see on TV: Klobmentum.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: I want to finish what we started here, and I want to present you the options I think the Democrat Party’s faced with after what happened at the Hawkeye Cauci and in the New Hampshire primary.

But first, more evidence that you’re right where you need to be if you want to know what’s first and if you want to be cutting edge political analysis. Last night CNN special coverage New Hampshire primary, former governor Terry “the Punk” McAuliffe, the Clinton campaign, the Clinton White House, governor of Virginia, had this to say.

MCAULIFFE: You’ve gotta give this guy credit. I mean, he came in first in Iowa. It looks like he’s gonna be second tonight. This is a guy, a mayor of a small town. A year ago, nobody gave this guy a chance.

RUSH: He’s talking about Mayor Pete Buttigieg. Nobody ever heard of this guy. Nobody knew where this guy was. Nobody… Uh, not so fast. Let’s go back to 11 months ago today.

RUSH ARCHIVE: Keep a sharp eye out for Mayor Pete. Keep an eye on this guy. He is gonna make mincemeat of all the rest of these people. When his time comes to face these people in debate, if he gets that far, keep an eye on Mayor Pete of South Bend. It’s all I’m gonna say. This guy was articulate for what he believes. He was personable. He had an answer for everything. There was no, “And, y’know, I… Like, uhhhh,” and there was no radicalism. Some things that he believes about Trump are typically crazy, but keep an eye out for Mayor Pete. He’s 37. Keep an eye out for Mayor Pete.

RUSH: Snerdley has been ticked off at me for making that observation nearly a year ago, because Snerdley believes had I not made the observation, a lot of people would not have given Mayor Pete Buttigieg the time of day. But just to illustrate. Now, Mayor Pete is, like every other leftist Democrat in this whole roster, a fraud in the sense that he’s trying to cover up the fact that he is a radical leftist.

His dad was a Marxist communist, who loved the Communist Manifesto. Mayor Pete’s trying to carve a niche for himself where he’s not Crazy Bernie’s got that all wrapped up. But I don’t care who the Democrats nominate. The party, as we’ve said, is gone. It is a far-left party now. There isn’t any moderate wing of any significance or size. There isn’t any segment of it that is not some flavor or form of socialist. They want you to believe that it is.

They want you to believe that Crazy Bernie’s off on a tangent and that he’s not really defining policy set for the Democrat Party. But a party is what its base is, and its base is maybe even to the left of Crazy Bernie. So let’s say you’re the Democrat establishment, and you’re faced with some hard, cold truths. You got Bernie number one, Buttigieg number two, and Klobuchar with her Klobmentum number three.

You’ve got Fauxcahontas way back there in the background barely out of the tepee bringing up the tail end. Biden’s gone. So you’re faced with a dyed-in-the-wool socialist who’s not even a Democrat; a gay guy, 37-years-old, loves kissing his husband on debate stages (can you see Trump have fun with that?), and Amy Klobuchar. So you are whoever the grand pooh-bahs in the Democrat Party are.

You’re looking at your options today (laughing), and you’re asking, “Okay, can we win with Klobuchar? We don’t want to put Klobuchar up there because she doesn’t have a prayer. Trump’s gonna wipe the floor with her, and that would mean two women in a row get wiped out by Donald Trump. Two Democrat women in a row. We can’t have that! We can’t let that happen.”

Then they’re sitting there and they’re looking at Mayor Pete — a 37-year-old gay guy, mayor of South Bend, loves to kiss his husband on the debate stage — and they’re saying, “Okay. How’s this gonna look, a 37-year-old gay guy kissing his husband on stage next to Mr. Man, Donald Trump? What’s gonna happen there?”

They gotta be looking at that, and they’ve gotta be saying that despite all the great progress and despite all the great wokeness and despite all the great ground that’s been covered, America’s still not ready to elect a gay guy kissing his husband on the debate stage president. They have to be saying this, don’t they? Now, there may be some Democrats who think that is the ticket.

There may be some Democrats who think, “That’s exactly what we need to do, Rush. Get a gay guy kissing his husband on stage! You ram it down Trump’s throat and beat him in the general election.” (laughing) Really? Having fun envisioning that. What are you left with? Crazy Bernie. They’re left with the avowed revolutionary socialist who isn’t even a Democrat.

So which of those three…? They want to take all three out. They would like to get rid of all three of those, the establishment of the Democrats. But if they can’t, which of those three would they rather lose with? Who among those three losing will do the least damage to the Democrat Party going forward? That’s what they are facing, if you ask me.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Bob in Ormond Beach, Florida. Hey, Bob great to have you. Hello, sir.

CALLER: Rush, it is such an honor since 1988. We love you.

RUSH: Thank you, sir, very much.

CALLER: Since this is the morning of the Biden demise, it’s about leadership. And the irony here is that the Democratic — the DNC, the strategists, the status quo, the Dem establishment purposely nominates somebody who isn’t a leader. They want the opposite. They want a pushover, somebody that will allow their grifting and allow them to, with open arms, steal from the government. It’s the same reason Hillary lost. And the people in this country recognize a leadership quality of Mr. Trump versus what is lacking in these Dem establishment leaders. I’d love your thoughts.

RUSH: Well, I’m not sure I understand. You think they wanted Biden because he’s a pushover and they can really run the government while he’s sitting there not knowing what’s going on. Is that basically your point?

CALLER: Exactly. Yeah. Yeah.

RUSH: Well, why didn’t you just say that?

CALLER: Okay. Sorry. I was trying to be eloquent because I’m on the air.

RUSH: (laughing) Just kidding. Well, if that was their plan, that’s kind of up in tepee smoke, isn’t it?

CALLER: Yes.

RUSH: So if they wanted a pushover in there that they could actually control — you said steal money or do whatever.

CALLER: Well, I didn’t mean steal. I mean grift. You know, the typical Democratic establishment grifters that want to —

RUSH: They’re gonna do that no matter if Biden’s — I’m not trying to diminish your point, because your point is good, that Biden was chosen, that he was preferred because he’s not gonna know where he is half the day. And he’s admitted this. And he’s gonna appoint people that are gonna actually — he’ll be a Robert Mueller.

He’ll be sitting up there doing nothing while the real power brokers are people we won’t even know pulling the levers for their own advantage. And if you this was their dream, like I say, it’s up in smoke. And if that was their dream, what kind of power do these people — if there was this big movement to get Joe Biden nominated, who are these people behind it? ‘Cause they obviously don’t have much juice.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Granger, Indiana. Victor, great to have you, sir. Welcome to the EIB Network.

CALLER: Thank you, Rush. It’s an honor to speak with you.

RUSH: Great to have you here.

CALLER: You mentioned earlier that of the three candidates, who would the Democrats want to lose with? I would have to say Amy Klobuchar would be the one. I think they’re still in the process of grooming Mayor Pete for probably a 2024 run, an honest one, and don’t want to put him on the big stage now.

RUSH: Wait a minute. Wait, wait. Still in the process of grooming Mayor Pete?

CALLER: Oh, definitely. He’s been groomed his whole career. He ran for —

RUSH: Oh, you mean prepped as a candidate. Okay. I’m sorry. You meant —

CALLER: (cell garbled) Whatever.

RUSH: You meant prepped as a… Okay. So they don’t want to throw him away right now. They don’t want Mayor Pete to lose now?

CALLER: No. He’s Barack Obama of 2024, is what they’re thinking.

RUSH: Really? Is he gonna get vitiligo or something?

CALLER: What’s that?

RUSH: Nothing.

CALLER: (laughing)

RUSH: Uh… (laughing)

CALLER: I really think he’s our big name in 2024.

RUSH: So you think that they would be…? I’ll just take what you said. You think that they, the Democrat establishment, would be content to lose two presidential elections in a row with women at the top of the ticket, Hillary and Amy Klobuchar?

CALLER: Yeah, because they can still blame it on sexist America not wanting to vote for a woman, and they’ve already started the process of saying Trump’s stealing the 2020 election with the Ukraine scandal.

RUSH: Yeah.

CALLER: So they’re getting all their excuses in a row, and then they can pop Mayor Pete in there in 2024 with more name recognition, more exposure over the next four years.

RUSH: Why wouldn’t they want to lose…? Look, I’m not disagreeing. I’m just picking your brain for this. Why wouldn’t they want to lose with Crazy Bernie at the top of the ticket?

CALLER: I don’t think they want that far left —

RUSH: Why wouldn’t they want abject socialism to get creamed?

CALLER: I think with Amy Klobuchar she’s a more safe candidate and what her views would be, how she comes across rather than the extreme. I think they know they need to stay in the center to win on the national level, whether they believe in the far left or not. You know, they want the far-left agenda, but I think they want to stay in the center as far as perception.

RUSH: Well, yeah. I understand. The perception of wanting to stay in the center. But perceptions oftentimes are gonna succumb to reality. That’s the problem with them. That is, I think, one of the problems the Democrat Party has. For most of my life, the Democrat Party has masked itself and hid from everybody what its real intentions are, and during the Obama years, they started to get brave.

And then after Trump got elected, they are totally brave now. Here comes Crazy Bernie, some of the other left-wing radicals, all the stuff happening on college campus. It’s gonna be tough to put that back in the bottle. I just… I don’t believe there is a great middle in the Democrat Party anymore. I said this yesterday. I just don’t believe it exists.

I don’t believe that it exists in the country. How can there be such a grand and great middle if we are so partisan? If we are more partisanly divided than we’ve been since the Civil War, how in the world can there be this great swath of moderate people that don’t care one way or the other in the middle? And that’s what people in the middle are, right? People who don’t care one way or the other?

And so it’s a myth that they’re there.

But everybody in politics lives with the belief that they are there and that they can get them and that, by getting them, they can then define themselves as something that’s not radical or not extreme. “We are the middle, straight down the middle.” There aren’t enough people in that swath, whatever it is, to get anybody elected.