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Oct. 16, 2006 - Rush Limbaugh Program
36:34
October 16, 2006, Monday, Hour #1
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Welcome to today's edition of the Rush 24-7 Podcast.
All right, folks, welcome back.
Weekends over time to get back in it.
Roll up the sleeves.
And get down to the dirty work.
Rush Limbaugh, the EIB network, the Limbaugh Institute for advanced conservative studies on the air.
Telephone number if you want to be with us today.
800-282-2882.
Email address rush at EIBNet.com.
When I tell you people that I am on the cutting edge of societal evolution, trust me.
Seeing the latest statistics.
For the first time, unmarried households reign in the United States of America.
R. E. I G N. So there and of course the USA Today version of the story, which is actually the French news agency, uh blames Bush.
The Bush effort is failing.
We'll have details on this.
Also, uh, ladies and gentlemen, uh, I'm I'm not kidding you about this.
Uh a number of liberal blogs do not think that there was an earthquake in Hawaii, that it was a a North Korea nuclear test.
And that is Bush's fault.
I'm not kidding you if it's a daily cause.
It's out Snerdley, I'm not by the way, Snerdley, you owe me big time because it happened on Saturday in the Boston Globe.
I made a bet with Snerdley, uh, ladies and gentlemen, that before the election there would at least be one piece, an op-ed piece by some liberal, suggesting that it might not be a good thing if the Democrats win the House, particularly if the majority is is very small, uh, because it it won't able them to do anything, and it's just gonna make the libs look ineffective and so forth.
And hit happen on Saturday.
Our old buddy Robert Cutner in the um in the Boston Globe.
It now looks as if the Democrats could well take back at least one House of Congress, maybe even two, but is this a fate to be wished upon them?
Yeah.
A fate to be wished.
He says, I've I've heard smart people argue that George W. Bush has left such a mess that maybe the Democrats would be better off just letting the mess fall on the Republicans in 2008.
After all, there seems to be no good way out of Iraq.
The administration dithered for nearly six years on Korea.
Now we have Pyongyang with nukes, not to mention Iran's nuclear challenge, and the budget and trade deficits continue to be time bombs.
Why should the opposition party want to share responsibility for these disasters?
Even if Democrats can expose and block the most dangerous parts of the Bush agenda should they win, it'll be hard for Democrats to deliver an affirmative program.
Potentially there's powerful politics in addressing the decline in living standards that plagues so many uh middle and working class families.
It's just so horrible out there, folks.
Productivity has nearly doubled in 30 years, but most of those gains have gone to the rich.
The typical family faces housing and education costs rising faster than incomes and insecurity of jobs, pensions, and health care.
Uh, neither party right now is serious about changing any of this because Bush's raid on the Treasury.
Bush's raid on the Treasury has deprived government of needed resources.
Bush's raid.
Addressing these pocketbook frustrations will require the White House as well as Congress, and it'll require a rollback of Bush's tax cuts for the wealthy, not just to balance the budget, but to restore social spending.
In the meantime, uh the risk is that voters will see divided government as mere partisan squabbling rather than a principled contest for what kind of country America is to be.
Blah, blah, blah.
So there it is.
Uh, and he he he cites others.
Um lots of smart people arguing that Bush should be forced to go it alone with his own party all the way into 2008.
Um and there's there are other telltale signs out there.
We're gonna attack again the doom and gloom on the uh on the program.
Uh, today, ladies and gentlemen, this this little story is just a uh a precursor that there's unease out there uh in the Democrat ranks about the future uh of for and and the and this election, and they're setting the table for if they lose.
Hey, that wasn't a bad thing.
Look at me.
I even predicted that this should be a good thing for us.
Do not believe that they are as confident out there anywhere in the Democratic Party uh or the drive-by media.
Let me quickly go through some of the things we're gonna be discussing today.
Gary, sorry, Jerry Stud's gay pioneer in Congress.
He uh he died at age 69 uh uh over the uh weekend, ladies and gentlemen.
And then the obituaries here are just well, they're amazing.
What a great guy, and he was such a pioneer.
We'll uh share the the uh the details.
What a, you know, that's it's all about what party you're in if you're gay, I guess.
Uh let's see.
What else we get at there?
The riots, uh these football game riots and so forth.
Uh Madonna's adopted uh boy, her father's having second thoughts.
The Muslims are upset about the Olympics in London in 2012, preparing to protest, cuz it'll happen during Ramadan.
Uh we can't do the Olympics during Ramadan.
They can wipe each other out during Ramadan, but we can't do the Olympics.
2012.
We're talking six years from now.
A guy named Robert Jensen, San Francisco Chronicle, writes, men being men is a bad deal.
Wait till you hear this.
Uh it's got some incredible uh uh quotes in it.
Uh Bill Clinton says the U.S. is in a lot of trouble because the right wing has backed the country into a corner.
Uh and just lots of other good stuff out there.
Uh but first, ladies and gentlemen, I want to I want to call your attention to uh a couple of things.
I have noticed uh out there over the weekend, uh, in the conservative blogosphere, uh a new term that has been I've I'm not sure who came up with this, but whoever came up with it has been praised, and then others are using it.
It's called the GOP pre-mortem.
Uh and it is uh basically the analysis of the Republican defeat before it happens and why it is going to happen and why it should happen.
Many of these people who talk about the Republican pre-mortem uh are convinced the Republicans deserve to lose simply because they deserve to lose.
And of course, what do we deserve to lose?
I I'll I'll tell you, there's there's so much uh well, not so much, but there's enough negativism out there on our side that it frosts me.
And, you know, with all due respect to these people, and to the extent that they're read, I don't know that they're aware that they are contributing to the problem.
There are two schools of thought on thinking positively.
And here's here here's what they are.
They're not mine, because you know I always believe in thinking positively because I believe in the attitude that results from it.
But those who are critical of thinking positive, well, if you do that, then you're gonna depress turnout.
Because if you go out and tell people everything's okay, they're gonna think they don't need to they don't have to have to vote.
If you tell them things are just over and there's no hope, uh, then they're not gonna vote either.
So the the intelligentsia on our side's got it figured out that no matter what we do, we're screwed, that our voters aren't gonna show up, that the base is turned off.
By the way, have you noticed all the stories in the drive-by media about what the Republican base is gonna do?
My point to you is they are not sure at the drive-by media.
They are hoping and hoping that they are right, and they're still out there trying to find it and prove it that the Foley mess is gonna depress the social conservatives, the values voters on the Republican side, but they haven't the slightest clue.
Latest battleground poll, ladies and gentlemen.
Get this.
October of this year, battleground poll.
Sixty-one percent of American voters identify themselves as very conservative or conservative.
34%, or 31, I'll have to get it.
It's even one of those two numbers.
I got this in the stack here.
31 or 34% of American voters describe themselves as liberal or very liberal.
Also, in the generic ballot in polling, 60% of those polled say, yeah, I like my guy.
I like my incumbent.
The New York Times has an interesting website that shows the House and Senate races and w who's got solid uh uh chance to return, which seats are leaning in what direction, which are still up for grabs, and I've got that printed out.
I'll share this with you as the program unfolds.
If you look at that, it differs dramatically from what they print in the newspaper every day.
This shows you that the whole thing is still up for grabs.
There's not a lock on any party winning anything.
According to their sources and polls, they've put together this map uh both House and Senate races, and they they break down the governor's races too, and I didn't even bother to look at that.
But uh uh that's interesting to me in Ohio.
If You look at Ohio and Florida, you've got, well, I'm getting ahead of myself.
I got too much here in my mind.
My mouth will not work as fast as the neurons are firing in the little gray cells inside my cranium, uh, cranium, which is, of course, uh shielded by the epidermis.
Uh we've got a Washington Post story.
Who wrote this story?
Guy named Michael Obramowitz.
This story was uh was yesterday.
White House upbeat about GOP prospects.
Self-assurance of Bush, Rove, and others not shared by many in the party.
Amid widespread panic in the Republican establishment about the coming midterm elections.
There are two people whose confidence about GOP prospects strike even their closest allies as almost inexplicably upbeat.
President Bush and Carl Rove, they don't understand these guys.
They're not this is a the uh uh an expansion on the story last week that Republicans are upset that the White House has no plans to lose.
And they have no plans uh if we lose.
And you know what they're gonna do if we lose.
No, they don't even think about losing.
They are they're convinced we're gonna win.
And then in a news story, this is not an op-ed.
This is not an analysis piece.
This is a news story comes this paragraph.
The question is whether this is a case of justified confidence based on Bush's and Rove's electoral record and knowledge of the money, technology, and other assets at their command, or of self-delusion.
So you have Michael Abramowitch writing in the Washington Post that Bush and Rove might be delusional.
This uh is something that even many Republicans suspect, he writes.
Three GOP strategists with close ties to the White House flatly predicted the loss of the House, though they would not do so on the record for fear of offending senior Bush aides.
Must be Republican moderates, uh, as opposed to uh conservatives.
So the White House is confident they're gonna do well, and the Washington Post can't believe do you guys not get the message?
You you they they're inexplicably upbeat.
This is the table's being set here for so many surprises on uh on election day.
And if Rove springs this um October surprise of capturing bin Laden, which a lot of Democrats suspect is good.
Kid you not.
We've had bin Laden for a long time, just been waiting for the most opportune time to announce his uh his capture.
Anyway, I want to talk about this continuing attempt to be the smartest people in a room by being negative and try to debunk it when we come back after this.
Don't go away, folks.
Again, the phone number is 800 282-2882.
Drive-by media just outraged that uh that Carl Carl Rove and George W. Bush don't have a plan for losing, and that they are inexplicably upbeat.
This story to me indicates, by the way, welcome back to the El Rushbo show here of the EIB Network.
This story indicates they're nervous out there uh in the drive-by media.
Apparently, it is just rude for Bush and Rove to not understand that they're going down in flames.
It's just how st we always have known Bush as an idiot and nothing but a frat boy, but if he doesn't even understand how bad it is for him out there, and he and Rove think they're gonna win, why why we're offended in the drive-by media.
Why, after all we've said and done to convince everybody that the Republicans are toast.
How can it be that Bush and Rove don't understand it?
Well, it the story addresses that.
To Rove and the uh and the small cadre of operatives who've been at his side throughout the administration, confidence flows from a conviction that a political operation that has produced three consecutive national victories is capable of one more, despite voter dissatisfaction with Iraq and Republican scandals in uh Washington.
Note, of course, no mention of uh Democrat scandals in uh in Washington.
So uh one of the things I do know the drive by's and the Democrats are terrified of is GOP turnout.
There's even a story here in the stack.
Democrats have the intensity, but Republicans have the organization.
Oh, they're getting scared, Folks.
Democrats have the intensity.
Is that what let me let me see if I I can find evidence of that intensity?
How about in the primary elections in various uh states around the country this year, the average turnout was what was it?
15%.
Average turnout fifth.
That's a lot of intensity out there, isn't it, on the part of these Democrats who have to be electronically restrained from the voting booth already, we're told.
They're so eager to get out and vote.
And it's too soon.
The polls aren't open yet.
They can't wait.
And yet only 15% on average turned out for primaries.
So where is this intensity?
The drive-by media Democrats are convinced that they can depress and suppress the Republican base.
That's why it irritates me when I see people who are ostensibly, and more often than not on our side of the aisle, get caught up in all of this for whatever reason.
The term GOP pre mortem.
I don't know who used it first, but a couple of other bloggers and stuff just think it's cool, and they're all uh they've all slapped, no, not all, two or three of them slapped it up and they think it's really really cool.
One of them, I know it's Glenn Reynolds, and I guess what's his place, uh, instapundit?
I'm not sure.
Uh but here's here's his analysis.
The GOP goes down, it's because it had it coming.
If the GOP goes down, it's because it had it coming.
Uh once again, let me ask, if if if the if the Republicans win, is it because they had it coming?
What kind of a fool reason is it to suggest that if the Republicans lose, it's because they had it coming?
Do Democrats have nothing coming?
Why is it that we still can't focus on beyond me and the USA-to-day columnist who picked up this thread?
Why is it that we can't focus on what happens to the Democrats if they lose?
You know, the the Republicans are expected to lose the way the the way the bar has been set, it really isn't going to be news, is it?
If the Republicans lose because that story has already been written and it continues to be written every day.
But if the Democrats lose, then is that not a huge story?
It seems to me that people that have an interest in the outcome of events ought to be looking at that side of this as well.
I'm trying to take the lead on this, but this whole idea of a of a um a premortem and analyzing why the Republicans are going to lose simply because they they had it coming.
Uh even if you believe Republicans deserve to lose, let me ask you, do you deserve to lose?
Does the country deserve a cut-and-run policy in the war on terror?
Do the 3,000 brave souls who've lost their lives in the war on terror deserve to have the rug pulled out from under their mission?
Do they deserve that?
Do you deserve higher taxes?
Do you deserve increased gasoline prices?
Do you deserve two years of probable investigations into so-called war crimes and potential impeachment here?
Do you deserve that?
Do the people of the country deserve what we would get with a liberal Democrat triumph?
You know, we look at this, as some people apparently look at this as uh as a game in Washington that doesn't affect us.
And the people go to Washington and if they screw up, well, then hell with them.
They deserve to lose.
It's good.
They'll learn a lesson by losing.
Hey, maybe so, but how long will it be before they win it back?
Never have understood this notion that you win by losing, that you win by quitting.
If we're going to say, ladies and gentlemen, that the Republicans deserve to lose because they've botched things up, then I guess we should say that the U.S. military deserves to lose.
We deserve to lose in Iraq, so we can learn a lesson.
How about how to how to do it right next time?
Does it make sense in either case?
Sadly, it does to some people.
It is it is mystifying to me.
What we have here are certain people, and I'm I'm I it's I'm sorry to say this.
I mean, I'm, you know, I don't I don't like being critical of my own team, but that's one of the things that's causing me to remark here.
We have people trying to get in front of the election results, partly to show how smart they are, partly for accolades, partly for because some of them may Think that they're right, but they may not even be aware that to some extent they're contributing to the uh to the problem.
Uh you know, I I I'm not comfortable being around people or with people who surrender before the fight is over.
I mean, you can talk to people who've worked in campaign after campaign after campaign, and they'll tell you it isn't over till it's over.
Uh if we lose, we lose.
And we'll know why.
We don't need people in advance tell us why we're going to lose.
Let the Democrats and the drive-by media continue to to uh to run with that.
Uh, I I it's just it's just it's maddening to me, ladies and gentlemen, because uh these people on our side talking about all the Republican problems, no, I the they don't spend as much time citing all the Democrat problems, don't spend hardly any time imagining the big news if Democrats lose this.
By the way, have you noticed how the drive-by media and the Democratic Party is hiding Nancy Pelosi?
More on that in just a second.
I know.
And thank you, ladies and gentlemen.
Welcome back.
We are here having more fun.
Any human being should be allowed to have Rush Limbaugh, your host for life and America's real anchor man.
So I'm out on a golf course on Saturday.
And some people come up to me and they say, you know, it looks like the Republicans are gonna lose, but is that really that's probably pretty good for you, isn't it?
And your show, you probably.
I over these years, I have had so many people who think they understand what I do and why I do it, who haven't the slightest clue who are my friends in some cases.
And I just look at them and I say, you know, it reminds me of during the 90s.
I started this show in 1988.
56 radio stations.
By the time Bill Clinton was elected, we had 500 in four years.
We added another hundred, ninety or so during the Clinton, a hundred stations or so during the Clinton years, and people say Clinton made me.
You had more fun during those Clinton years.
I said, You think so?
Do you actually think I like losing to these people?
Ladies and gentlemen, I'm gonna flat out, I do not find anything attractive about losing to these people.
I do not like losing.
And the nineties, as a citizen, were hell on earth for me in more ways than you can count.
Now, it might have been fun with all the things we were able to do here on the radio, but they were still the winners in the midst of all of it.
And it grated on me.
I hate seeing them win.
And that's why I just go bonkers when I hear people on our side suggest that the Republicans deserve to lose.
That's like saying we do.
And frankly, I don't think I deserve higher taxes, and I don't deserve to be placed at greater threat from terrorism by cutting and running from a rock or anywhere else in the war on terror.
I I frankly, I don't think your children or grandchildren deserve to lose to the kind of people who are telling us what they will do to this country and with the power if they win.
So I I don't I d don't understand this this mentality uh at all.
And it is it this this this election is like everything else.
When you look at the battleground poll, 61% of the country calls themselves conservative, barely 30 to 34 percent call themselves liberal, and this election's over.
It's all about turnout and the drive-by media and the Democrats know it's about turnout, which is why they are trying to suppress you in the values coalition, the Christian right, and any Republican possible that are trying to depress you into not voting and to get you to hate your own congressman for whatever reasons.
And you'll note that there is not a similar similar effort going on by the media against any Democrat.
Now, a bad congressman's a bad congressman.
Somebody makes mistakes, it's somebody who makes mistakes.
But don't fall for this notion that it's only the Republicans who deserve to be tossed out of here.
Uh uh.
I got a note from a friend.
I want to share With you some excerpts of this note.
Why on God's green earth are Christian conservatives demoralized in the first place?
I thought they were the first graduates of media bias 101.
And right now, if they don't see the single most orchestrated attempt by the media to get their Democrat brethren into office, then they deserve to have their diploma taken away.
He's talking about you voters.
I got a friend here who thinks that if you voters may deserve to lose if you're going to behave stupidly and buy into the media bias.
After all you know about media bias, after all you've learned about it, to get tricked by it into not voting.
His point is if anybody deserves to lose, it's you for not understanding what you face in this media conspiracy.
The well-time Foley story refuses to die, even though he resigned eons ago, because the media wants to shove in your face that gays exist in your party.
You didn't know that?
You didn't know there were homosexuals in your party?
You didn't know that.
The supposed liberal activists pay no mind that gays are being portrayed in the media as child-obsessed, lecherous perverts, the way women's groups ignored Bill Clinton's serial abuses of women.
You're smart enough to see this, right?
What about Time Magazine's cover of the GOP as an elephant's rump last week?
While the next week this week, uh it's Senator Barack Obama on the cover.
Which leads me to where is Nancy Pelosi?
They've got Barack Obama as the great future of the Democratic Party.
The fact of the matter is Barack Obama hadn't done anything.
You know, why not put Pelosi on the cover?
Pelosi's the I mean, if she is potentially, no matter what you think, Nancy Pelosi is potentially an historic figure in the sense that if they win, she'll be the first female speaker of the House.
Not that the Lib Media.
That's an historical event, but why are they hiding?
Why can you not find pictures of Nancy Pelosi in the drive-by media?
They're hiding Nancy Pelosi.
Wonder why.
I mean, I would think that something historical like this would be something well worth covering constantly.
Nancy Pelosi, Miss America, future speakerette of the House.
But no, they're hiding Nancy Pelosi.
Now you know why, don't you?
Take a stab, Mr. Sturdley, bet loser.
Tell me why it is they're hiding Nancy Pelosi.
They they don't want voters to know who she is and what her record is.
I think a lot of people already know enough about her.
They just don't want to be reminded.
They don't want to remind people she'll be the speaker.
I mean, they're purposely hiding Nancy Pelosi.
This is not something done from uh the position of uh of confidence.
Uh how many, how many anti-Clinton books were explored during his administration on network TV?
Gary Aldrich was banned by ABC because the George Stephanopoulos threatened the network.
ABC responded to the threats by hiring Stephanopoulos, gave him the prestigious this week anchor seat.
Yet in Bush's administration, every single anti-Bush book is explored on network TV, especially those like David Quo's, which only served to manipulate the schism between religious and non-religious conservatives.
And by the way, David Quo, in his book, and I got a couple of sound bites about this, never once said that he heard President Bush diss religious conservatives.
Only Bush aids.
They're a bunch of phonies.
They tell you religious writers what they want you to hear, and then they make fun of you after they think they've looped you in.
So it's an ongoing effort.
It's blatant.
It's as plain as the nose on your face that the drive-by media is targeting religious rights.
They're 24 million of you.
And the media is targeting you.
They're trying to enrage you, they're trying to convince you that your party laughs at you just as much as a libs does, makes as makes as much fun of you as the libs do, has disdain and disrespect for you, much like the libs do, except they're phony and they court you and they make you feel important and they want you to hate the Republicans for this.
But you ought to know this without having to have it explained to you, because you were the first graduates of the media bias 101 course here at the Limbaugh Institute for Advanced Conservative Studies, you religious rights voters above all should be able to spot what's going on out there without having to be told what is going on.
I mean, this goes on and on and on.
The Democrats in the media are behind all of it.
The Democrats want the Christian conservative vote, yet they attack your underlying values and your intelligence.
If they can convince you Christian conservatives not to vote, uh if if they if if if you don't vote now, when you're being treated and manipulated like fools by people that they know are their sworn enemies, then you don't deserve the power that's been conferred upon you by your block status.
If you are willing to be tricked and manipulated by the drive-by media and the Democratic Party from this foley thing on, uh, then maybe, maybe I can make a case that there are some voters who deserve to lose.
Now, don't misunderstand me here, conservative Christians.
I'm one of you.
Uh, and I'm not mad.
I am trying to give you a wake-up call here.
Um, and frankly, this is precautionary because I don't believe all the garbage talk I'm hearing that you've abandoned.
There's a story in here.
Christian Wright abandoning Republican Party in favor of big government liberalism.
Christian right wants big government.
I mean, the full court press is on, and you are the targets in terms of turnout in uh in this election year.
Quick phone call before we have to go to the break.
Bob in Madison, Georgia, you're next, sir, or first.
Welcome to the program.
Pigskin dittoes, Rush.
Thank you, sir.
It seems to me like the psychology of the Republican Party like right now is the psychology of uh of a home team that's heavily favored in a football game, and they fumble.
Exactly at the time when they're when the team needs the support of the fans, they're going, my gosh, we fumbled.
How horrible.
Or, you know, a kickoff gets run back, or something like that, and the favorite team finds themselves down.
And so in our situation, Foley is the fumble.
Uh they've tried to fire the coach, who is Denny Hastert.
I mean, the fans are screaming for his neck.
Um, but something happens in the game.
You know, eventually the the people that really have the determination stand up, the momentum shifts, and and ultimately you prevail.
But it it's always astounding to me how you can sit there and all the fans around you are in utter silence over the prospect that, oh my gosh, your team is behind and they could lose.
No, no.
That's that's that's a that's a fairly decent analogy.
I I could poke holes in it.
Not every team's fans are that way.
Uh no, they're not.
They're not.
Uh Steelers fans haven't haven't abandoned them, didn't abandon them when they were one and three.
And they did not snerdily, they didn't abandon them, and the Steelers came back yesterday and played like the Steelers of old.
But I give you a better example.
Forget football.
Let's talk the National League Championship series, the New York Mets, and the St. Louis Cardinals.
The series tied one-one after the teams play two games in New York.
The rain out means that every game is gonna be, there's not gonna be a day off in this series.
So the teams fly to St. Louis, play game three on Saturday.
Cardinals win game three.
So they're up two to one in a best four out of seven series.
On Sunday, the New York tabloids wrote the Mets off.
It was over.
Why they had lost the momentum.
Why, it was horrible.
They bullpen fell apart, and this next starting pitcher, Oliver Perez, oh my god, he can be really good, but he can stink.
The Cardinals are at home, they've got the big Mo.
It's over.
What happened?
The Mets creamed the Cardinals last night, even the series at two and two.
The one thing the New York sports media forgot was that the players didn't read them.
And the manager Willie Randolph didn't read them.
Willie Randolph said, What?
Momentum in baseball doesn't work this way.
The best four series, and we're tied one-one, we lose game three, and all of a sudden we've lost the series.
We don't think that way.
It's not the way it works.
And they promptly came back, and this pitcher that wasn't supposed to last an inning lasted six.
Cream the Cardinals last night.
There's all kinds of an people don't like sports analogies, but the the point that there are always doomers and gloomers who don't play the game.
There are doomers and gloomers who do not ever take the field, who get treated as experts, who end up trying or depressing all the others around them.
And they've never been in a game.
They've never run a campaign.
They've never been involved in politics.
They are simply commentators, analysis, media people, what have you.
But keep an eye on the players.
I've got to go.
A little long in this segment.
We'll be back after this.
Stay with us.
Now I mentioned at the top of the program that the New York Times on their website has a uh uh uh chart, House and Senate races.
Uh who's solid, who's leaning, uh, what the toss-ups are, so forth.
Senate, House uh, and governor's races from uh all over the country.
Now, the conventional wisdom out there is that this is over, and the Democrats is this is a matter of time, uh, Democrats maybe maybe with 30 to 50 seats.
And the New York Times itself and the newspaper runs stories uh similarly to that effect.
Yet if you look uh at their projection charts uh on the on the website, uh it's entirely different than the conventional wisdom.
For example, this chart, New York Times looking in the center, show it to those of you here uh watching on the Ditto Cam.
And what it what it has here, we've got we've got um Republicans with 47 solid seats, with two leaning in the Republican direction.
Uh and those are in Virginia and Arizona.
Now the the the th the thing about this that's curious is that John Kyle, one of the two who is in the leaning column, has got a double-digit lead over his opponent.
The other one in Virginia, of course, George Allen.
So I would I would call it 48 and one.
I I mean, I don't know how you say a guy with double-digit lead this close to the election is leaning to the Republicans, meaning John Kyle.
Uh the Democrats have uh, what is it, 40 solid seats, eight leaning, and there are three toss-ups.
So, in terms of solid, it is now 47 to 40 Republicans versus Democrats.
The Democrats are leaning toward victory in eight of them, Republicans leaning in two, and there are three toss-ups.
This does not sound like a landslide or a majority victory for the Democrats, just waiting for election day to roll out.
Now, if you look at the House version of this, um, it looks just as tight despite all of this talk.
Have you heard the frame title wave of blue, the blue wave that will be oh, that's all over the place to drive by the blue wave, blue states, blue wave, a giant, just imagine an ocean, uh blue wave coming right at you.
Republicans are gonna get swamped by the No, the map doesn't support it.
It's exactly right.
The Democrats, uh, if you add it all up, here are the individual numbers.
Solid for the Democrats, 191, leaning for the Democrats, 19, 16 toss-ups.
For the Republicans, 187 solid 22 leaning, this comes out if the election were today and the chart were correct, the Democrats would win 210 to 209.
Terms of uh of seats based on on this chart.
Uh either way, the House and Senate uh are tight.
They're not by any means leaning heavy one way or the other, and there certainly is nothing in this chart that indicates the 30 to 50 possibility that the Democrats are going to take over.
If you also there's a fascinating site out there called um uh trade sport, I think the name of it.
You can bet on anything there.
Uh and you can bet on the House going Democrat, going Republican, you can bet on where the deficits, you bet on anything.
You bet on Princess Die coming back to life if you want, I guess.
And uh uh the the trend there is for Republicans keeping the House.
You know, this is the people that are spending money on it.
Uh also, folks, fascinating story in the stack.
I'll lead off the next segment with it about something that really doesn't have anything to do with with uh uh political polls, but uh retail market researchers are having all kinds of problems bringing new products to um to market because they just can't find enough qualified consumers who will participate honestly in market research to give them an indication whether the product will succeed or not.
In voting for new members of the United Nations uh Security Council, uh Venezuela lost to Guatemala.
Guatemala did not get enough seats to win on the first ballot.
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