http://www.rushlimbaugh.com/daily/2016/09/28/your_host_ruins_the_post_debate_glow_for_mark_halperin_and_john_heilemannYour Host Ruins the Post-Debate Glow for Mark Halperin and John Heilemann
September 28, 2016
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RUSH: "Clinton Feels the Pressure." Why? Even after a strong debate, Clinton has a huge staff advantage over Trump. The Electoral College is tilted in her favor. She's running to succeed Obama, who's a popular president. She's running against Trump who ought to be the easiest candidate for president ever to beat. And despite all that, she finds herself in an excruciatingly tight race. "Why aren't I 50 points ahead?" Apparently she is feeling the pressure.
The next headline from Politico: "Clinton Campaign in 'Panic Mode' Over Florida Black Voters." This story is from today. It's a post-debate story. This is not something held over from something prior to the debate. "Democrats are sweating over turnout in one of the most important states on the electoral map." They don't even mention here that she essentially pulled out of Ohio, which I still don't get. That still doesn't make any sense to me, but they have suspended their advertising in Ohio. And The Politico story goes on to document the problem with black voters in Florida, not nationwide.
I saw this and I knew this was gonna happen. BizPac Review has the story. "Amazon Deletes Over One Thousand Bad Reviews to Cover for Hillary's Abysmal Book Sales." Clinton has a new book. It's called Stronger Together. She cowrote it with Tim Kaine, the vice president. They didn't write anything. This was ghostwritten. Everybody knows that. It's been met with abysmal sales and critical reviews.
"Amazon.com came to the rescue by reportedly removing negative reviews of the book from its website," according to our buddies at World Net Daily. Doesn't surprise me if it's true. Folks, the entire professional political and media apparatus has come together on one side of the aisle, and alone the other side is Donald Trump. And there is no mistaking this. They are cheating, rigging, using the power they have to stack the deck. Mrs. Clinton, who has often played the victim card as a woman who is the victim of an unlevel playing field is clearly leading a ragtag bunch of partisans, which is doing everything it can to maintain an unlevel playing field.
Little things like what Google is doing with their searches and Amazon now eliminating negative reviews. That means there probably aren't any reviews except the ones the Clinton campaign has submitted. Her memoir book for which she got a $14 million advance, that didn't sell. She didn't draw anybody to book signings. They had to shut down the whole book tour. It was dead in the water. She simply doesn't have it, they all know this. They all know it and they're in denial. They know she has no personal connection, even with the people voting for her. She has a personal connection to people that know her and the fundraisers and donors, but the average Dick, Tom and Willie out there who are gonna vote for her just because she's a Democrat, a D next to her name, she doesn't personally connect with 'em. She doesn't stimulate any excitement, and they know this.
They're the ones living in denial when they tell themselves what a great debate she had, 'cause if she had such a great debate -- we'll have to wait for the polls -- if she had such a great debate, that ought to be reflected in the polls, shouldn't it? If she had such a great debate, if this was such a slam dunk, and we'll find out, she should pull ahead dramatically. If what they're saying about this debate is true, that Trump was humiliated, that Trump was embarrassed, that Trump was embarrassing, that Hillary was dynamic, that Hillary was on her game, that Hillary had him by the nose, the testicle lockbox was in full display, she just owned the night. Well, the poll data should reflect this, should it not? So we will see.
Grab audio sound bites number three and four. Last night Bloomberg Television, With All Due Respect. That's the show that's cohosted by John Heilemann and Mark Halperin. Mark Halperin is known for his work at ABC News for many, many moons. Halperin and Heilemann write this book every campaign that they release after the election that contains all kinds of stories, vignettes, little tidbits of information that they hold for after the election about, I think, both campaigns.
It's clearly a financial effort. I mean, the information they gather during the campaign, they hold it, they shield it, they reserve it, they back-burner it for their book that comes out after the election. And some of the stuff they learn and find out, had they used it during the campaign, you never know, it might have had some impact. But all the anecdotes, all of the stories, tidbits of information, even some off-the-record stuff that people share with them, they hold all of that. That's who these two guys are, if you don't watch their show on Bloomberg TV.
We occasionally use sound bites from these guys 'cause we like 'em. I mean, they are excellent illustrations, classic representations of the political establishment, slash, media. What these guys think and their attitude and their view of things is a pretty good window to what the entire thinking of the Washington-New York-Boston political corridor axis is.
So we go to the audio sound bites, and Heilemann and Halperin are talking about Trump and the presidential debate. And Heilemann says to Mark Halperin, his cohost, says "Do you believe at this point that it would do Trump any good politically to just admit that he lost the debate? Just admit it and then start shaping up for the next one?"
HALPERIN: This morning I thought he should say, "You know, this was my first time debating, you know, I didn't like the way the questions went, but I'm gonna do better next time." But now I don't think so. His supporters, Rush Limbaugh said he won. I think as brazen as it is and as counterfactual to a lot of how people experienced the debate, I think he should just tough it through, pretend it didn't happen and hope that it doesn't impact the polls, in which case the national polls and the battleground state polls in which he could say, "Hey, I didn't lose."
RUSH: So I once again have confounded what these guys think should happen. Trump was so bad, in their opinion, that he should just admit it, because everybody knows it. There's no reason to act like it didn't happen. This is their thinking, and just own up to it, you know, just be honest with the audience. The audience knows that you sucked, Mr. Trump, the audience knows you were terrible. Let 'em know that you know, Mr. Trump, and build a bridge of strict relating with them. You tell 'em, Mr. Trump, that you know how bad you were. They already know, and they'll think you're an honest guy.
That's what they want Trump to do. Until I entered the fray yesterday with my post-debate analysis, which has now thrown a monkey wrench into what these guys, Halperin and Heilemann, want to happen. Mr. Snerdley, it's a technical point. I need to ask you. Did I actually say that Trump won the debate? I said that snap polls showed that he won, all but the CNN poll. I also said that snap polls are not scientific polls; they're internet of-the-moment polls. They capture the passion of the moment. I also said that the Drive-Bys, like these two guys, looking at that debate still fail to understand how Trump supporters view Trump.
So when they analyze these debates in terms of who won a talking point... Like when Trump failed to hit one of these hanging curveballs, these guys say, "He really missed it there! That's bad! Trump lost some stuff there. Man, that was a golden opportunity!" His supporters didn't abandon him because of any of that. That analysis, therefore, is irrelevant if you go issue by issue or point by point, question by question, answer by answer.
"Yeah, Trump blew that! Boy, what he could have said, and he blew that! Oh, my God, did you see how he could have...?" And if they think that this is how people decide who they're gonna support for... In fact, there has been a serious poll, and off the top of my head, I don't remember who it is. Maybe it's Morning Consult. Here's the deal on it. It pretty much agrees with the CNN poll. Something like 60% think that Hillary won; 27-29% think that Trump won. However, only 9% say that the debate will have any effect on their vote.
Only 9%, which is my sole point in discussing this. These guys in the establishment, they analyze this answer by answer, sometimes sentence by sentence. "Yeah, that was bad! Trump dropped a bad point there. He should have said that. Oh, yeah!" As though Trump supporters are sitting out there listening. (impression) "He said that? All right, that's it, Mabel! We're not voting for Trump. I can't believe it!" Same thing with Hillary. People just don't watch 'em this way, but particularly in the case of Trump.
His supporters are in this for all kinds of different reasons, and if these guys inside the Beltway are gonna continue to judge this as though Trump is a seasoned politician when he's not, as though Trump had... Trump doesn't have a public record. Whatever is going on in this country right now, you cannot blame any of it on Donald Trump, including Iraq and the Iraq War. Hillary Clinton? You can attach her to everything that's happened in this country, pretty much, particularly the last eight years, and when she was a senator, and when she was a first lady.
Trump was in none of that. Trump is a rookie. Trump is a genuine outsider. He has no fingerprints on anything, and yet they're analyzing this debate as though Trump is as much a part of the system as Hillary is, and he's not in any way. He doesn't have the experience. He's got television experience. He doesn't have the actual business-of-politics experience. I think it's actually a phenomenal achievement for Trump to be judged in this way. Now, they think judging Trump this way is the best way to disqualify him.
But they don't get that his supporters and a lot of other people are not looking at it that way. They know who Trump is. They know he's an outsider. The expectations they have for Trump are entirely different than the expectations Hillary's supporters have for her. And I think, folks, this is a profound point. I call them "profundities," how everybody in the establishment insists on plugging Trump into their world, when he hasn't been a part of it, other than maybe as a donor.
But aside from he hasn't been a part of it at all. You can't blame anything... They talk about Trump's plan for ISIS. They talk about Trump's plan for the economy as though... He doesn't have any past experience with any of it! That's the attractiveness! That is the allure. We are gonna find out in November how many American voters actually think it might be time to try a genuine outsider. That's what this is really all about.
But these people continue to judge Trump and these debate performances and everything else as though he is an abysmal failure in their system who has no business being there. It's like Michael Goodwin in the New York Post today wrote that if the media's not careful, they're gonna win this election for Trump. The media might actually be Hillary Clinton's biggest problem, even though it doesn't look like that. It looks like the exact opposite, her biggest asset.
Here's the next sound bite, by the way. This is Heilemann going back to Halperin after I was blamed for not recognizing Trump lost.
HALPERIN: He plainly lost the debate. The big difference to me between this and 2012 when Barack Obama failed in Denver in the first debate, he confronted mass panic among his supporters. He had to admit that he lost and that he would do better the next time because Democrats were freaking out. Trump fans are not freaking out. Trump fans saw a different debate than we saw last night. They think he won.
RUSH: They judge it a different way! They didn't see anything differently. They're judging it a different way. This isn't hard, unless you somehow are so locked into this establishment mode of thinking that you can't get out of it for a while.
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