Don't Go Nuts Over Every Poll; Democrats Desperate All Over The Country (Maha Rushie Alert)

Bush is up by three in the Zogby poll today. I haven't seen the Zogby poll today, seen the rolling poll today, the three-point average. Have you seen...? Is the Zogby poll out today? Haven't seen it? Fine. I know he's up by three in Florida. Bush is up by three in Florida, by five in Ohio, up three in Wisconsin, two in Iowa, down only one in Minnesota, down ten in Michigan in Zogby. New Mexico up five. Nevada up four. Down four in Colorado. This is the one that people are not -- I mean, even the libs -- Sorry, here it is: Bush is up three nationally now, 48-45 in the rolling three-day average of Zogby. So not only up three in Florida but up three in the national Zogby follow. Rasmussen has Kerry up 48-46 today. That's the aberration of the day. It's the only poll that shows Kerry ahead and that's Rasmussen.

Double-check that for me, because these things are rolling in here so fast it's hard to keep track of all of them. Regardless, you still have John Kerry on the defensive in this poll, and with the need to make up some ground here as we head forward. The vice president was on the Today Show today. He predicted 52-47, the vice president predicted today, would be the final outcome. That dovetails with a number of my friends, folks, so I'm just going to go here and say that. Oh, we've turned on the Dittocam. I meant to do this at the top of the hour today, folks, it was so hectic here that I neglected to get to it. Let me, before time expires -- and I want to get this out of way -- this New York Times story. I read this today and said, "This is just like the story we did three weeks ago." Do you remember we talked here about a story: missing cache of weapons that could be used to manufacture nukes?

Remember this, and our focus then was, "Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait a minute! Nukes? I didn't think there were any nukes in Iraq! I thought there was all bluff. I thought there were no nukes in Iraq and I thought there were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq." Maybe it's a month ago now we did the story. Here's the New York Times: Huge cache of explosives vanish from site in Iraq! Do you know this is 19-month-old news, folks? Nobody knows, and this story doesn't say when these weapons went missing. Nobody knows. You can read the whole story, and you will not find anybody, nor the Times anywhere in this story, asserting a specific time when these weapons went missing. It's not anywhere in this story. One official is quoted as saying they went through the facility sometime towards the beginning of the war; they saw no materials carrying the seal of the International Atomic Energy Agency, and they moved on.

Deep within the story is the most likely explanation for what happened to the weapons. "It was standard Iraqi practice to, prior to bombing, move explosives out into the open and camouflage it so that it would not be as readily perceived to be a target." In fact, they moved them out of where everybody knew the weapons were, and then they camouflaged them to protect them. "Standard Iraqi practice to, prior to bombing, move explosives out in the open, camouflage it. In all probability these stockpiles of weapons were long gone before any American soldier ever got near the place where they were originally held." [emphasis added] Now, this story is exactly what everybody on our side has been predicting would be part and parcel of this week's activity. You can go through, you can look at... Ron Brownstein has a piece today in the LA Times, and you know what it's all about? Voter fraud -- and guess what?

Not one instance of Democrat voter fraud is mentioned! You don't have any reference to this ACORN group in the Ron Brownstein story. It's all focused on the fraud and the deceit that the Republicans plan on perpetrating, and this is designed to scare minority voters into thinking that Kerry is right, that their votes are going to be suppressed, when just the exact opposite is the case. If any black votes are being suppressed, it's votes for Kerry that are instead going to go to Bush. There was also good news Friday into the weekend. Two appellate courts overturned U.S. District Court judges on this silly ruling that they both came out with. One was in Ohio. Where was the other one? Forget what state. It might have been Michigan, was it? Ohio and Michigan, federal judges and the guy in Ohio was a Clinton appointee, said: "Hey, as long as you show up in the right county, it doesn't matter if you're in the right precinct.

"You don't have to show up where you're registered; you can show up, as long as you're in the county, your vote will count," and at that point a bunch of Democrats petitioned the Florida Supreme Court to rule the same way. Florida Supreme Court said no. You have to be in the precinct where you're registered if your vote is to count, whether you early vote or vote on Election Day. Then the appeals court overturned the Clinton-appointed judge in Ohio the same thing happened to a federal judge in Michigan. He was overturned. So these voters are not going to have the luxury of showing up anywhere in a county. They have to show up where they actually are registered to vote. The theory being many of them don't even know that they're registered and they don't know where they're registered because they've been the product of massive voter registration drives.

Have you seen pictures of the absentee butterfly ballot in Cuyahoga County -- Cleveland? It is Florida all over again. I've got a picture of it, and we'll link to it; put it on the website. This ballot lists all the presidential candidates, Kerry and Edwards first, Bush and Cheney last, sandwiched between "disqualified," "disqualified," and two obscure candidates. Nader is not one of them, but of the four tickets, Bush and Cheney are on the bottom, and in the absentee ballot it's very confusing as to who you're going to vote for because the punch cards don't align properly. I must stress here that it appears not to have any partisan tone to the mistake, but the person in charge of this has resigned in Cleveland without any explanation. She's scrammed. She's fled the scene.

Nobody can find her. Nobody knows where she is, but anyway they're trying to work this out. In Pennsylvania, of course, the Democratic governor there, Ed Rendell said, "Ah, we don't need to go to extra special concerns in extending deadlines to make sure the military can vote." These are from the people who claim to "support the troops." Bottom line is if you look at what's going on out there -- and I know it's frustrating and it's irritating and it promotes anxiety -- but if you look at it for what it is you still see utter, pure panic on the left, folks. Where you see the panic, where you see the fear, where you see the lack of confidence it's right out -- you got Bill Clinton being dragged out of his bed. Wait till you see what Clinton says about his task for Kerry.

RUSH: Here's the latest from Rasmussen. It is Kerry 48, Bush 46. You add in the "leaners," people leaning one way or the other, and it's Bush 49-48. This is Kerry's highest number since August 17th in the Rasmussen poll. All right, now, my friends, we're going to do this once. We're going to get it out of our systems, okay? So we got a Rasmussen poll here and it shows Kerry up. I want you to -- on one, two, three -- I want you to go: "Oh, no-o-oooo!" and be done with it. Okay, just get the panic out of your system. One, two, three: "Oh, nnnnnnnooooooooo! It's over!" All right, now, that's it. I mean, this is how this stuff... You can't go with this. Each poll every day you're going to go nuts out there, folks, and you're going to drive me nuts sending me this stuff each and every time. You're going to drive me nuts. You know, I'm on a straight road here. It's free and clear. I'm heading down the road at my speed. I know where the road goes. (sigh) Here's an example. Let me grab a phone call here before we go to Der Schlick Meister. Julie in Mobile, Alabama. Hi, Julie. How can I help?

CALLER: I think to listen to all these nervous Republicans who are freaking out this last week, they just need to listen to you and get the confidence that we need. Bush is going to win and after even turning you on for 30 minutes. My feeling it's going to be a landslide. Bush is in. We have nothing to worry about. Listen to you and we're all right.

RUSH: (Chuckles) Have I said landslide? I haven't said landslide. I appreciate what you're saying. I appreciate that. My point is nothing's changed. But you've got these -- look it, I'm going to sound like a broken record. Julie, I appreciate the call. Thank you so much, and it's great advice. If you know some panicked Republicans, call 'em, and if they're not listening -- and they probably are and they're not panicked anymore -- but if they're not, have them tune in. Never mind. I'm not going to go through the through it again. I'm not going to give my mainstream press lecture. You've heard this for two years. The mainstream press is who they are; they're going to come out in unison this week for Kerry. I mean, you ought to see the Washington Post editorial that chooses Kerry.

It's the weakest, it's the weakest assessment. They list nothing but his -- well, they list some of his "strengths" but they're mentioned tenuously, and they are very, very worried about his weaknesses and they're very, very worried about his flop flops. They're very, very worried about a number of things but for some reason they still find a way to choose him. No surprise, is it? Are you surprised that they would endorse Kerry? No, so don't act like it's a big deal. I think both of these guys, in the Times and the Post, endorsed Walter Mondale back in 1984. They lose far more than they win in this endorsement game. Now, about this New York Times story. I don't want to let this go just so quickly. Let me read to you just the first paragraph:

"The Iraqi interim government has warned the U.S. and international nuclear inspectors nearly 380 tons of powerful conventional explosives used to demolish buildings make missile warheads and detonate nukes are missing from one of Iraq's most sensitive former military installations. The huge facility called Al Qaqaa was supposed to be under American military control but is now in no-man's-land, still picked over by looters as recently as yesterday. UN weapons inspectors had monitored the explosives for many years but White House and Pentagon officials acknowledged that the explosives vanished sometime after the American-led invasion last year." That's 19 months ago. We do not know when these weapons went missing, and this story does not say.

We've got this massive, panic-filled story about missing weapons and explosives but not one word on when they went missing. It's not mentioned in this story. This is not new. It's not even a new discovery that these weapons have been missing. It is a new story, and it is repackaged to make it look like it was just discovered yesterday, like it was just discovered over the weekend. The fact of the matter is this: these kinds of weapons existed throughout the Saddam regime. They've been there since -- this is one of the reasons we went in there, folks. I mean, the truth is, if this story was written accurately, the question would still be open: "Where were the weapons of mass destruction?" It's one of the reasons we went in there, but since the press has foreclosed the notion that there were weapons of mass destruction, any time we discover missing weapons of mass destruction, all of a sudden they're new!

Well, the fact is, we went in there among many other reasons to get rid of weapons like this and we get in there and we find that the place these weapons were always kept weren't there. That's what we discovered when we got there 19 months ago. We also learn that Saddam had a practice of taking these weapons out of where they were normally held because we knew where they were and they would be targeted during bombing. He moved them out, put them in the open and camouflaged them. You hide something by putting it somewhere where nobody expects it will be and they overlook it because it's camouflaged, then you go into the bunker where the stuff originally was held and you don't find it, "Whoa, it's missing!" It's not "missing. It was removed. The question is: "Where is the stuff?" and it's always been the question. Where is the stuff? Is it in the hands of the insurgents?

The New York Times clearly wants you to believe it is. The New York Times wants you to believe that every bomb that blows up in Iraq comes from this cache. Well, the bottom line is that these weapons were not in the hands of Bush administration officials or the U.S. military. We were not guarding them. It's not as though we were Colonel Sanders and the chickens got out. This is simply an old, repackaged story and it's designed to make you think and the libs... This is nothing but boosting Kerry turnout. That's all this story is designed to do: boost Kerry turnout by saying the world is more dangerous because Bush is incompetent, when in fact this is not the case at all. We've talked about these missing weapons before on this program, and we're going to be talking about caches of missing weapons like this.

I don't care who's president after next week or next month or whenever it is decided. So just do your best to understand the truth of what this is. By the way, National Review Online has a detailed explanation of all this. If you go to NRO.com, you'll find the Kerry Spot, that's what it's called. That's the title, Kerry Spot tab, and just click on the Kerry Spot Tab. It's a daily accouterment there of things happening in the campaign and it's quite informative and illustrative and that's where the analysis of this piece comes from. But I'm telling you, I looked at this this morning and I said, "This is nothing new." It's nothing new. It's simply repackaged designed to make people think that, "Uh-oh, another flub-up in Iraq yesterday!" Why, why, how timely isn't it, folks? We screwed up yesterday. Why, 300-and-some-odd tons of stuff got stolen yesterday over the weekend. Shazam! Just an unfortunate thing.

More from El Rushbo on keeping calm and confident the last week before the election:

BEGIN TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Here's Doug in Peoria. Nice to have you. Welcome to the EIB Network, sir.

CALLER: Hi, Rush. Pleasure to speak with you today. How are you?

RUSH: Good. Thank you, sir. Hey, I had a quick comment and a question. I just wanted you to know that all three of my kids were first exposed to you on the way home from the hospital. Went and brought 'em home, put the radio on, put you on each time. So I just wanted to let you know that you were and continue to "play in Peoria." Thank you for that.

RUSH: Thank you, sir. Thank you, sir. I appreciate that. You're a good American.

CALLER: Well, I appreciate that. Quick question on the polling. A lot of polls out there. My question is what polls should we be looking at?

RUSH: All right.

CALLER: Based on the 2000 results, what's the most accurate?

RUSH: All right, all right. Nobody knows. I mean, if you want to go back to 2000, the two polls that called it closest were the Harris poll which called the popular vote exactly and Zogby which was second. But let me tell you, Doug, there's a website out there called Real Clear Politics that seems to have become a favorite of a lot of people in synthesizing all of these polls. Real Clear Politics averages, has a rolling average every day of all the major polls combined, and they dig deep each day with an analysis. Now, according to their rolling average, just in the popular vote right now, I think, the popular vote right now has Bush up somewhere around (3.1 head-to-head; 3.5 with Nader) points.

If you take all the polls, average them out, the current polling data as of today has Bush up (3.1 to 3.5). Now, let me share with you, Doug, some of their update analysis today as it relates to the electoral map. Right now the electoral map, according to state polls and a number of national polls, Bush has 234 electoral votes, based on the polls today. Kerry has 211, and there are 93 tossup electoral votes out there in the battleground states. Now, the Real Clear Politics people describe it this way: "President Bush continues to maintain a structural edge in the Electoral College that has worked to his advantage this entire campaign. However, the states that are producing that advantage have shifted since the summer. In our initial electoral analysis, we suggested that the election would boil down to Florida and Ohio, with Kerry having to win one of those two states and President Bush simply needing to carry them both to gain reelection.

"At the time, we suggested that one of the president's advantages was the possibility of offsetting a loss in Ohio or Florida by poaching some of the Gore states -- Iowa, Wisconsin, Minnesota, New Mexico or Oregon -- giving the president an alternate option of collecting an Electoral College majority that Senator Kerry really never had. Now, as of today this alternate option, if necessary for President Bush, is starting to look more and more like a very real possibility," meaning the president could win this and still lose Ohio. You saw some reference to this from the president himself over the weekend. He was asked about this and he said, "Don't just look at Ohio, Pennsylvania and Florida. There are going to be some surprises out there," he thinks, all over the place.

The election is going to be decided in more than just those three states, and the Electoral College analysis of all of these polls by Real Clear Politics seems to give even more weight to that as of today, because "as of today this alternate option, if necessary for President Bush, is starting to look more and are more like a real possibility. Iowa, Wisconsin, Minnesota, and New Mexico, are fully in play. Eight days before the election Bush holds leads in the RCP state averages Real Clear Politics state averages in all four of these states. This is seriously complicating Kerry's strateg[er]y in getting to 270 electoral votes. Conventional wisdom for months, including Real Clear Politics, had been that whoever won two of the big three, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Florida, would almost certainly become president.

"Not necessarily the case today, and while it may still be likely that whoever carries two of those three will win the election it's not the-cut-and-dry-proposition it was earlier. President Bush can offset a lot in Ohio and New Hampshire by carrying Wisconsin and either Iowa, New Mexico or Minnesota. He can offset a loss in Florida and New Hampshire by winning three of these four states, three of those four states. Winning Wisconsin, Iowa, Maine's one electoral vote and holding New Hampshire would also allow President Bush to win re-election election while losing Florida. Now, turning conventional wisdom completely on its head, President Bush could even lose all three -- Ohio, Pennsylvania and Florida -- and still win, as long as he was able to flip Michigan, but granted it's difficult to imagine a scenario where Kerry would win Pennsylvania and Ohio yet lose Michigan.

"But with a poll in Michigan showing the president ahead by five, and Mason-Dixon calling it a one-point race coupled with a gay marriage initiative and Ralph Nader on the ballot unlike Pennsylvania and Ohio, it's not totally impossible. In this scenario, Bush victories in Iowa, Minnesota and Wisconsin could offset the loss of Florida's 27 electoral votes. Michigan would offset a loss in Ohio, leaving Kerry with a measly three-electoral-vote pickup. Now, the Michigan option is a little farfetched, but the other two aren't. The problem for Kerry is that he has no backup plan to not winning in either Florida or Ohio. The problem for President Bush is that Kerry is still very much alive in both of those states. All of Bush's backup electoral scenarios will be irrelevant if he loses Florida and Ohio and Kerry hangs onto Pennsylvania and Michigan."

The thing that's important to look at -- I'm not going to go through the individual states, just take this summary as a practical matter for having done that -- but when you look at these, when you look at the electoral map today according to the combined averages of all these polls at Real Clear Politics, you get a Bush total of 234 and a Kerry total of 211 with a tossup of 93, and the simple math there also tells you that Kerry has a lot longer way to go to get to 270 than Bush does. He's got a lot more ground to cover and at the same time he's got far less room for error to lose certain states, and that's why they say here that the advantage right now is for Bush. But keep in mind all this is still according to polls. This is not one poll. This is Real Clear Politics electoral count, and they have totaled up all the running big national polls, the big state polls, and averaged them out to get their national number of Bush up (3.1 to 3.5) and then they've gone to the state polls to look at the Electoral College plus the national polls as well.

So right now (3.1 to 3.5) for Bush, up in the combined Real Clear Politics poll. That's probably the best we're going to do looking at polls, folks. In fact let's go back to 2000. If you go back to about this time in the year 2000 -- if my memory serves, I'll have to look this up -- but I think Bush was up as we got to the latter part of this week, to the Thursday before the election, the Wednesday or Thursday before the election, Bush was up five. In some polls he was up six. Then the DUI thing hat and it had all weekend to percolate, and that five-point, six-point lead was eroded. Now, a lot of people back in 2000 did not believe all this talk that the election was going to be as close as it was and there are a lot of people this time who don't think it's going to be as close as these polls indicate. Cheney himself said on the Today Show, he predicted today that he and the president would win by a margin of 52-47, which is five points – a pretty bold statement to make.

I've always told you that the campaigns have their own polls that are far more detailed than the polls we see reported predominantly, not because they're any better just by definition, they're more detailed because more money is spent on them, larger samples, far more people polled in far more states. That's one of the largest expenses outside of advertising that a presidential campaign incurs, and if Cheney is out saying this, some people say, "Well, he's trying to affect this outcome." Others are saying, "No, he's pretty confident of it and this is why he's saying it." A lot of people, though, believe it can't possibly be this close. It's like Michael Barone in his piece today that I have in the stack here somewhere. It's published at TownHall.com, I believe, theorizes that there's a lot bubbling underneath the surface that the polls are not picking up, such as decent and normal people's reaction to this over-the-top hatred and rage.

He refers to the Wellstone memorial as being something that totally backfired on Democrats in 2002, and he says that something like that could happen here. What he means is that the entire Democrat campaign is in effect a neverending Wellstone memorial, filled with rage, filled with hatred, filled with the assumption everybody hates Bush; filled with the assumption everybody hates everything Bush says or does, that everybody hates religion, that everybody is scared of God, that everybody is this or that and so they conduct themselves in such a manner as though they believe that. They're not worried that they're going to offend people because they don't think they're going to offend too many people, and so this is causing some to think that there is again this great unwashed, silent majority out there that is going to show up in droves on Election Day and that Bush is going to win huge, that they're purposely being ignored or not found by pollsters or that they are not showing up, that they use cell phones and pollsters are not reaching them -- or that people are lying to pollsters.

And I'm sure the Democrats have the same body of thought within their ranks, that this can't possibly be as close as it is. It has to be a bigger victory than this, that we're not this polarized, not when we're at war, not coming out of 9/11. I mean, the theories abound here, and a lot of people will allow their hearts and their emotions to run away with them and they will be governed and ruled by their desires. They will substitute their desire for what they think is reality, and you have to guard against that. The polls are really the only thing anybody has to give us any kind of an indication, and they are, from poll to poll, like I say. In 2000 Harris and Zogby were pretty close, with Harris right on the money. For example, I'll give you an example: October 27th of 2000, in the CNN-TIME poll Bush was up by six 49-43 over Gore. Then the DUI hit and bammo! We all know what happened. So it's still up for grabs.

I don't know what to tell you other than to share with you this data from Real Clear Politics, but it's like I said last Friday, folks: "This is all going to depend on turnout," and I'm telling you right now that this barrage of news that you're going to get this week from the dominant, partisan, mainstream press is designed to depress turnout, depress Bush turnout and inspire Kerrey turnout. I mean, you've got the New York Times story today. It comes out with this supposed cache of weapons that just went missing yesterday, when nothing could be further from the truth. These weapons have been missing for 19 months. Nobody knows when they went missing. The story doesn't even say. But there's Kerry on the campaign trail today just like clockwork citing this story as another example of "Bush incompetence." Nobody will convince me that there isn't some sort of coordination between the news media and the Kerry campaign, and we know there is because the CBS and the forged documents.

We know there is because Evan Thomas of Newsweek has pledged five-to-15 points for Kerry based on mainstream media support. So when we see Kerry go out and starting hyping the New York Times story the day it comes out, and then AP dutifully reporting what Kerry says about a half hour after his remarks on these missing weapons, it's all designed to depress you. It's all designed to depress your turnout, depress your energy, to make you throw up your hands and go, "Oh, what's it worth? We can't win." That's what they want you thinking. They want you thinking that the mainstream press is still all-powerful, all-dominant, and no matter what inroads we gain, no matter what desires we have, we're going to be cut down.

That's the whole purpose of this week, folks, and I want you to keep this in mind and not let it work. Use this as energy to focus yourselves even more. Use this as sort of like an ignition switch to get you to the polls, not depress you, because that's exactly what all this coordination designed to do -- and even with all this, and I keep reminding you, even with all this, Kerry is behind. He has never led this race. Rasmussen has him up today by two, but when averaged in with all the other polls Bush is still up plus 2.9 or basically three points. So even with Bill Clinton out there and even with aaaall the stops that they're pulling out, Kerry still can't vault himself ahead of Bush, and yet they're running this week all of these stories to make it look like it's over. Kerry has this thing won. It's a slam-dunk. It's just a matter of time -- all designed to depress Bush turnout and more. Don't let it happen.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Also, a minor correction. I was looking at the wrong thing on the Real Clear Politics poll. The Electoral College stuff was accurate, but in the national horse race poll, in a three-way race, Bush is up plus 3.1. In a head-to-head race, with Nader not in the poll, it's Bush up 3.5. This is in the combination of all these national polls that are out there, including the Rasmussen poll today that has Kerry up by two. The average of all the polls out there today shows Bush up either 3.1 or 3.5. Now, I'm going to try this before we get to the break. I know that a number of you out there, and I keep touching on this, and I just did. I warned you about not falling for the tricks of the press this week and their constant alliance with Kerry and their attempt to suppress the vote. There's also something else that they're doing that bears mentioning here.

Something else they're not doing, which I want to put in front of you, which will explain to you why some of you are just down in the dumps, if you are. You look at things like Kerry's voting record, which is abysmal. You look at his wife's tax information, which is outrageous. She pays an effective tax rate of 12.8%. She's a multibillionaire. His wife gives to ultra-left-wing causes, insults the first lady. If you look to his near treasonous actions toward the U.S. military when he got home from Vietnam, if you look at his horrible performances in the last two debates, his elitist attitude, his personality. He's a charismatic dud, folks! The guy is a walking cadaver, particularly when you put him even next to Clinton, just six-week out of the hospital. He flip-flops on every issue.

He has no faith, yet he claims to be a man of God. He wants to turn our defense over to the United Nations, to old Europe. If you look at the swift boat vets, on and on and on, what about all this? None of it is reported in the mainstream press. None of it is! If this were reported in the mainstream press one-tenth of the time the Bush National Guard story has been in the mainstream press, John Kerry would be down 30 points and it wouldn't even be a race, and you know it, and I know it, and this is why you sometimes lose faith and think, "Oh, we can't win because they're stacking the deck." Well, it's the deck. It's the way things are, and it's what we have to deal with, and the fact that Bush is still up by an aggregate 3.5 after all this ought to be a reason to enthuse everybody out there, folks, particularly going into the last week.

Don't let the partisan media drive you NUTS. Look at how all this playing out and we knew they were going to manufacture a lead for Kerry. Beyond that and everything else they're pushing, you'll know soon enough that its over.

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