Bernie’s crowd doesn’t want anywhere near Hillary. They’re disappointed that Bernie’s not the nominee. And, by the way, there’s an NBC poll out. You will not see much coverage of this at NBC today, by the way. The Today Show gave it a fleeting mention. The headline, the NBC News headline: “Hillary Clinton’s Lead Over Trump Shrinks After Controversial Week.”
You’re not gonna find NBC spending a lot of time showing the details of this poll. You’re not gonna find the Wall Street Journal spending a lot of time. Today Show, as I say, gave it just a casual kind of brush-off mention. And here’s why. I’m sure that they were expecting that Hillary Clinton would pull away in droves in this poll because I still believe that traditional, inside establishment political professionals still do not know how to handicap, watch, analyze this race.
It’s like yesterday we had the piece from Andrew Malcolm, who asked, “Is Trump Torpedoing His Own Campaign?” I mean, for crying out loud, he’s had a full week to go full bore at Hillary over this email stuff and he’s done nothing but talk about himself. And I’m sure that’s what the political professionals inside the establishment, inside the Beltway think. They think Trump’s not spending any money, doesn’t have any money, Hillary’s running gazillions of dollars’ worth of ads saying that Trump’s unqualified, that he’s a misfit, that he’s not got the right temperament.
They expected Hillary to just pull away, especially after her exoneration, which was not an exoneration, but they think it was, not being charged in the email scandal. She is sinking in this poll. Trump has pulled to within three points in the past week. In the past week she has spent a small fortune on TV ads to make her seem likable in swing states. And that’s mission impossible. You could see that today as she was standing next to Crazy Bernie.
The one thing Hillary isn’t is likable, and that’s not why people are voting for her. They’re voting for her ’cause it’s Clinton and a Democrat and a big D on the ballot. There’s no personal connection people have with her. And that’s going to matter. Trump, while Hillary was dropping gazillions of dollars here to besmirch him, Trump didn’t spend a dime. In fact, some people on the Republican side are wringing their hands, “My God, he’s not even out there campaigning. My God, he’s not even doing any appearances. Oh, my God, does Trump even want to win, oh, my God.” That’s been the fear in Republican circles.
You had this FBI decision announced by Comey during the period in which this poll took place. And I think the wrong take on that is that Hillary wasn’t indicted. Let me ask you a serious question. Have you ever seen the director of the FBI do a press conference of 20, 25 minutes laying out all of the violations, all of the violations of law, all of the supposed pretty obvious lying? Have you ever heard the director of the FBI do a 25-minute, 20-minute press conference explaining the guilt of a perp, and then saying, “But we’re not gonna charge because we couldn’t find any intent.” Have you ever seen that happen? No.
You never see that happen. You never see what goes on behind closed doors when there aren’t any indictments or no charges. If you ever did it would be the line attorney or, more likely, the attorney general who would call the press conference and explain why no charges are going to be filed. Loretta Lynch went up and testified before a committee on Capitol Hill today, and she wouldn’t even admit that lying under oath is a crime. She wouldn’t admit anything. She just got in there and got out of there. It was a perfunctory performance.
My point is that — and I can’t tell you the number of, I call ’em civilians, people that email me that are not in the media, that are not writers, that are just news consumers. I’ve had friends of mine who think Comey was great, who think this was the greatest thing. Finally somebody came out and made a case against her. While we’re all sitting here saying he sold out. He coulda charged her. He coulda recommended charges. He coulda lowered the boom, but he didn’t do it. We’re all coming up with reasons why.
People I’m hearing from think he did lower the boom. And this NBC poll may be some evidence that people did hear what he said and Hillary is paying the price for it. Despite all the positive spinning by the Drive-Bys, despite all these efforts to say, “Hey, she’s in the clear. She’s in the clear. She didn’t do anything wrong. Everything’s home free with her.” No, apparently not. The poll shows something else entirely.
Now, I do think that Trump and the Republicans need to really hammer this. I think they need to get going on it, at least make it a prominent item at their convention next week. Online polling, by the way, was a fundamental aspect of this poll. Do you know what the margin of error is in online polling? It’s 1.4%. I can’t believe that, but that’s what they say here. That’s a better margin of error than these phone polls are, 1.4% margin of error online polling.
By the way, this poll took place at the same time Obama loaded Hillary into Air Force One via the cargo bay, flew down to North Carolina, had that joint appearance, flew back to wherever, Washington. I mean, that’s supposed to give her a bump in the polls. Here she is with the president, Air Force One. He, by appearing with her, transmitting she couldn’t possibly have done anything criminal. She sunk lower in a poll taken during a week when that happened.
Despite this, despite Hillary’s lead shrinking — and Trump, by the way, is gaining, too. It’s not just that he’s static. He gained in the poll. She lost ground in the poll. Everybody’s shocked. And while that’s going on, there are Republicans, there are Never Trumpers who are still toying with the idea of throwing Trump overboard next week in Cleveland. That would not be wise.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: From the AP, the headline: “Clinton Struggles to Make Inroads With Young Americans.” I gotta tell you, over on the Hillary campaign, they have to be discombobulated, they have to be a little bit puzzled, just like I think establishment Republicans are.
Folks, I’m here to tell you, this past week, if you go back seven days ago and you start talking to insiders, establishment types, the elites, Republicans, Democrats, I’m sure they would have told you that this is the week that Clinton was gonna pull away, maybe unbeatably so, and that Trump was gonna fade into the background. The convention on the Republican side is falling apart. Nobody knows what’s happening. Nobody knows who’s speaking. Trump doesn’t even have any idea who he’s gonna pick as his vice presidential running mate. Nobody wants to do it.
There’s this Never Trump faction trying to mount a coup, take the nomination away from him. You would have had both political parties’ professionals believing — and throw in Hillary, in their minds, being exonerated, because she wasn’t charged, and so with a Clinton, as long as there’s no criminal accusation, then everything’s fine. They consider to be it gotten away with. So you’ve had this NBC/Wall Street Journal poll out today, which you can’t find anybody at NBC saying too much about, showing that Hillary’s lead is shrinking and Trump is gaining ground.
Then you have this. “Clinton Struggles to Make Inroads With Young Americans — Hillary Clinton is struggling to make inroads among young Americans who overwhelmingly supported Bernie Sanders during the Democratic presidential primary, a worrisome sign as she tries to reassemble the coalition that twice propelled Barack Obama into the White House.
“Opinions of Clinton among young Americans vary by race and ethnicity, according to a new GenForward poll of adults ages 18 to 30. The majority of the nation’s younger blacks and Asian-Americans have a favorable impression of Clinton, but the presumptive Democratic nominee struggles with whites and Hispanics.”
What’s that you say? Hillary struggling with Hispanics? Why, that doesn’t fit the formula. It’s exactly right. Hillary is struggling with whites and Hispanics.
“Just 26 percent of young whites and 49 percent of Hispanics have a positive opinion of the former secretary of state. Both groups overwhelmingly say she is not trustworthy.”
I think that Hillary believes campaigning with Bernie will take care of this. I have no doubt that she thinks that. She allowed herself to look like a bobblehead doll, bubblehead, whatever it is, standing next to Crazy Bernie today as he made his supporters regret that he was pulling out. She’s promised Bernie enough goodies that he’s gonna be out on the hustings with her starting today in New Hampshire.
“GenForward is a survey by the Black Youth Project at the University of Chicago with the Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research. The first-of-its-kind poll pays special attention to the voices of young adults of color, highlighting how race and ethnicity shape the opinions of the country’s most diverse generation.”
Cool. Another tribal poll. Love it. Anyway, “The survey polled all young adults, not necessarily registered or likely voters … found that among those who preferred Sanders in the primaries, only half are prepared to say they’ll back Clinton.” That’s young people.