RUSH: Bill Moyers and all these people are upset here that I refer to Mrs. Clinton’s testicle lockbox. I feel very honored, by the way, to have forced that term on PBS. Moyers used it Friday night talking to Kathleen Hall Jamieson, asked her what it meant. (laughing) Do you remember during the 1992 presidential campaign, George H. W. Bush running against Der Schlick Meister, and Ma Richards had the old line at the convention, ‘Poor George, he can’t help it, he was born with a silver foot in his mouth.’ I don’t know if it was also her or somebody else, but the people in that campaign were running around suggesting that George Bush reminded women of their first husband, which was intended to contrast George Bush’s blandness with the Rhett Butler-type roguishness of Bill Clinton. Do you remember that? Of course, this prompted me to say that Mrs. Clinton will remind men of their first two ex-wives, who they married for all the wrong reasons and then suffered through a couple of decades of psychic abuse and so forth. (laughing) So they can start stuff, but they just can’t take it. If you’re just joining us, here’s what Andrew Young had to say about Bill Clinton. It’s web quality, by the way, at NewsmakersLive.com, a website focusing on African-American issues. He’s a former mayor of Atlanta, by the way, Andrew Young, audience member said, ‘Two words: ‘Barack Obama,’ would you care to comment?’
YOUNG: I want Barack Obama to be president… (applause) …in 2016. (laughter) Barack Obama does not have the support network yet to get to be president. The Clintons have — he’s — he’s smart, he’s brilliant. But you cannot be president alone. Hillary Clinton, first of all, has Bill behind her, and Bill is every bit as black as Barack. He’s probably gone with more black women than Barack.
RUSH: Now, he did say, I’m teasing or I’m joshing or joking or whatever, but nevertheless he got a lot of applause. Andrew Young then continued.
YOUNG: If you read about the Clintons, when Clinton decided to run, Hillary sat on the defense committee, and that’s what they called it. And you know what it was? It was to go around and neutralize all the women that he’d ever been involved with. And she got her friends to be on the defense committee to protect him from the attacks.
RUSH: Now, do you understand, he is saying that’s why she’s qualified. He started off by saying, Barack Obama doesn’t have the support network yet to get to be president, but Hillary Clinton does because she spent almost 35 years on the bimbo eruptions protecting her husband against women who were attacking him, women, Andrew Young says, he had been involved with. So Clinton was on the Early Show today on CBS, and get the way Harry Smith frames the question. ‘Your good friend Andrew Young actually said in a group setting for cameras and everything else, that you are more black than Barack Obama. He said he was joking.’
CLINTON: Well, we’ve been friends a long time and, you know, my office is in Harlem, I’ve always been close to the African-American community. I think we’re trying to build an America where we’re all pulling in the same direction, and, you know, Hillary and I have been working on a lot of these issues together that are very important to African-Americans now. When I met her in law school, she took an extra year to work for Marian Wright Edelman and the Children’s Defense Fund, and when she went out of law school she turned down all these offers and went to work for her because she cared about these issues.
RUSH: Yeah. And then she turned down other offers to go to Arkansas with you. Yip yip, whoop-whoop, big deal. But did you notice Harry Smith did not ask him, ‘What about this business Andrew Young says you’ve been with more black women than Barack has.’ Now, again, you can ask, ‘Why, Rush?’ You don’t need me to answer the question. They’re not going to do anything to upset the Clinton bandwagon or juggernaut. They’re going to cover for it. That’s what the purpose of this question and appearance was. (doing Clinton impression) ‘Andrew and I, we’ve been friends a long time. Screw him. But I got my office up there in Harlem. We know what’s going on in black people’s lives. Hillary and I have been working on ’em for years. The fact they haven’t improved doesn’t mean anything because we’re still working on it, gotta keep working on it. They’re not gonna improve because our policies don’t help anybody improve. Our policies, keep ’em where they are so they keep needing us, ha-ha-ha.’ That’s it in a nutshell.
From Albert Hunt, this has got to hurt, maybe. Albert R. Hunt used to be with the Wall Street Journal, The Capital Gang, now he’s with Bloomberg News. ‘Letter From Washington,’ his column is entitled, ”The faltering Clinton campaign.’ — To appreciate Hillary Clinton’s fundamental political problem, consider the 11 Democrats from Philadelphia who gathered last week to discuss the U.S. presidential race, almost all of whom would vote for her in a general election. The focus group was moderated by an expert on such forums, the Democratic pollster Peter Hart. The participants were informed and enthusiastic about their party’s prospects, had no interest in the Republicans or third-party candidates and were about equally balanced between the front-runners, Clinton and Senator Barack Obama of Illinois. When Hart pushed the group during a two-hour conversation about the strengths and weaknesses of the two candidates, a different picture emerged. Obama, they worried, can’t win the nomination; voters aren’t ready for an African-American president (a point expressed most directly by the two black women participants), and he may not be sufficiently experienced.
‘The concerns about Clinton, 60, a New York senator, are that she is devious, calculating and, fairly or not, a divisive figure in American politics. Those are a lot tougher to overcome. It was revealing, too, when Hart pushed them to envision these senators as leaders of the country or, as he put it, their ‘boss.’ Obama, they say, would be inspirational, motivating, charismatic and compassionate. After praising Clinton’s experience and intelligence, they say she would be demanding, difficult, maybe even a little scary.’ So Bill Moyers and Kathleen Hall Jamieson, you can now ask yourselves again, ‘Why does the visual image of the testicle lockbox, where Mrs. Clinton is concerned, work?’ These are Democrats who say she’d be demanding, difficult, maybe even a little scary. ‘Candor and authenticity were repeatedly cited. ‘I don’t feel like I look at her and see someone who’s telling me the whole truth,’ said Allison Lowrey, a 30-year-old human resources consultant from Philadelphia. ‘I’d like to see her approach a problem without the polls’ helping her make a decision.’ There were other comments like this that just cannot be pleasing.
‘This isn’t an anti-Hillary crowd. She gets high marks for her experience, intelligence and toughness; these qualities, they suspect, are what voters demand. Their hopes and dreams, though, are with Obama, 46. If he can dispel misgivings–‘ By the way, they’re saying he’s too young and too inexperienced. If Obama does get elected, he’s going to not — what was Clinton when he was elected, 47, 48 years old? Obama’s 46 now. If he gets elected, he’ll be 47. He’d be older than JFK, and he’s been in the Senate. ‘They need reassurance that Obama will be ready from Day One. Conversely, Clinton, in trying to get to the top of the mountain, Hart said, ‘has only looked at one face of the mountain — her experience, the emphasis on strength and toughness. She hasn’t recognized the other side of the mountain; she hasn’t allowed voters to see who she is and her personal dimension.’ The Clinton camp has similar research. Things are tense in Hillaryland these days.’ Hillary’s campaign is off balance. ‘And her campaign has a near-obsession with what it perceives as a hostile press.’
She hasn’t allowed voters to see who she is in her personal — perhaps it is that she has done that and that the people are seeing it for what it is. So Mr. Hunt says, ‘The Clinton organization had a clear plan A: It envisioned the candidate, as the choice of the party establishment and natural heir to the presidency, to so dominate 2007 that she would be able to corner, not have to capture, the nomination. It worked perfectly for most of the year. The strategy has imploded. In a similar situation, Bill Clinton would have changed plans on a dime — he could have gone from B to E during a rest stop.’
Now, I don’t know. The conventional wisdom is that she’s in trouble. The conventional wisdom is that the campaign’s imploding. But remember what I said at the very outset. This business of inevitability is one thing, and her desire to want to corner it rather than have to capture it. But the fact is, she also needs to show she can overcome a challenge, and what better challenge to overcome than Oprah Winfrey? So when I read columns from people who I know are going to vote for Clinton and want her to be president, little red flags go up, and I say, ‘Okay, what’s the real reason this stuff is being written right now?’
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: Bruce in Fort Wayne, Indiana, great to have you on the program, sir. Glad you waited. Welcome to the program.
CALLER: An honor, sir.
RUSH: Thank you.
CALLER: Months ago, you made a prediction that Mrs. Clinton had an 80% chance of winning the presidency unless things changed. And with Obama and the recent PR, have things really changed?
RUSH: Well, according to polling data, and that’s all people have to go on, yes. Basically a three-way tie in South Carolina, New Hampshire, and Iowa, with Mrs. Clinton losing ground in Nevada as well, which she owned. So you’d have to say things are changing. The caveat here is that I also said back then, remember the press doing all the puff pieces on Obama, building him up to be Second Coming, something fresh, never before seen in American politics, all that rotgut? I said they’re doing this because Mrs. Clinton has — even though they want the inevitability, they want the ease of inevitability, gotta make it look like she really had to fight for this, really had to overcome an obstacle. And guess what? That option is now present. She’s gotta fight. She’s got an obstacle. She’s got Obama and The Oprah and she beats ’em back and overcomes ’em, do you realize what that will allow them to say? Why, she’s tough. She can handle it. She didn’t panic. What do you mean, candidate of inevitability? She can get it done. You can trust Hillary Clinton — smart, decisive, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. So, you know, 80%, maybe it’s down to 60%, because of this. Her negatives are going up.
Nothing with the Clintons is coincidence, just like nothing in Washington is ever as it appears. So we’re just following this. Here’s a date for you to keep in mind, because the Hawkeye Cauci are on January 3rd. The New Hampshire primary is the week after. I know the Obama camp is convinced, they have to be locked in by December 23rd, because they don’t think there’s going to be any chance to change significant minds during the holidays. Once the holidays hit and families get together and people leave home and start doing all kinds of things, and candidates can’t go heavy metal campaigning during that week, ’cause it will offend people. ‘It’s the holidays. Can you people leave us alone? You’ve been here for two years, you know, in Iowa and New Hamphire. Do you have to come around our house on Christmas Eve? Can you at least leave us alone ’til after New Year’s Day?’ So the Obama camp is concerned, they’ve gotta get it locked in, and college students go home. The Democrats love the yutes vote, and so they’re trying to zero in. They’re always going to miss this because the yutes aren’t going to vote. They’re going to say they’re going to vote and get all excited, and I think the Clinton campaign is trying to do the same thing, trying to zero in on that December 23rd date, because after that it’s going to be harder to move things. That’s why the intense pressure from now until then.