RUSH: The NBC News/Washington Post poll. It is indeed very bad for Obama, but it’s irrelevant. The poll means nothing to Obama. His presidency is not over. It’s just getting started. I say this because Obama is operating unilaterally. He doesn’t have to face voters anymore. The lame duck analogy doesn’t apply to Obama. Mostly when a president reaches lame duck status, it’s usually meant to be that he’s powerless.

But that doesn’t apply here to Obama. His lame duck status simply means: The fact that he doesn’t have to face the voters anymore means there’s no reason to hide. There is no reason to camouflage. There’s no reason anymore to pretend to be something that he’s not. So now he’s operating as he is. He is unilaterally behaving. He is not facing the electorate anymore.

He doesn’t have to worry about losing an election, and therefore pandering to the electorate. He’s dismissed Congress. They don’t exist — and they never have, really. So how is it “over”? You know, this is a complete disconnect between popular opinion and his conduct. I think this is really key, folks. There’s a complete disconnect. Popular opinion doesn’t matter, and yet to the media popular opinion is everything, and they don’t get this.

That’s why they’re not reading it correctly. It’s why they don’t understand… I was gonna say, they don’t know who Obama is. And in some ways, they may not. In other ways they may be applauding all of it. But it ain’t over. This huge disconnect between popular opinion and his conduct is, I think, a very important key. Now, there’s news in this poll that hit me much the way exit polling did in 2012.

I got the first wave a five o’clock. I told you that when I saw the answers to two questions, I knew the election was over. One of the questions was, “Cares about people like me: Obama 89% to 11% over Romney,” and then I saw that something like “60% still blame Bush for the economy.” I said, “All right, well, this election’s in the tank. It’s gone.” The innards of this poll are the same.

For example: “After the Obama administration announced new Environmental Protection Agency regulations,” meaning the 30% reduction of carbon emissions to wipe out the coal industry, 57% of the people in this poll say they approve of that. “Fifty-seven percent approve of a proposal that would require companies to reduce greenhouse gases that cause global warming by 30%.” (sigh)

I don’t care what it says about Obama. That’s upsetting. “A combined 61% believe that climate change requires either immediate action to combat it or some action. By contrast, 37% say that the country doesn’t know enough about it or that it’s unwarranted. Now, this is confusing. This is the first poll I’ve seen in a long time where there is a majority of people believing in global warming. Most of the polls on global warming show you that most people don’t even care about it.

So there are some things to be suspicious of here.