RUSH: Did you hear what Joe Biden said? (interruption) Joe Biden said there really hasn’t been any change in hope and change. He claimed, Biden said, that the change promised by Barack Obama didn’t happen, and “National Journal’s Ron Fournier called Joe Biden’s claim … ‘a really bad moment for the White House,’ [because] it undermines the central premise of Obama’s election to the presidency in 2008.

“Fournier appeared on CNN’s … to discuss the vice president’s inconvenient admission on Wednesday. ‘There must be a clip after that where he says, “Hey, I’m just kidding,” Fournier remarked. ‘[The vice president] basically conceded the original sin of the Obama presidency, which is, “We promised to at least start changing Washington, and we failed.” And then later on, what he does say there is,'” they promised hope and change and it “didn’t happen.”

Now, there are two schools of thought on this, because note what Fournier thinks the change is. Fournier thinks that the change is Washington. Now, when Barack Obama promised “hope and change” and the average American voter bought into it, what do you think the average American voter thought Obama intended to change? Now, I will concede, as we all will, that there was a lot of anger at George W. Bush.

Some of it justified but a lot of it manufactured, folks, over a four- to five-year intense period of media hammering Bush on virtually everything. And Obama did campaign on the basis that he could end partisanship. We were gonna be post-racial. We were gonna be post-partisan. It was going to be a new day. The world would love us, and there wouldn’t be any acrimony anymore.

I will acknowledge that some people might have think Obama meant he was gonna change Washington in the sense that people are gonna start getting along with each other, and people are gonna start cooperating with each other and it’s gonna be a kumbaya utopia. But I never thought that’s what Obama meant with hope and change. I never for a moment thought that’s what.

I always knew. I had heard him say that he wanted to “fundamentally transform the country,” and you gotta do more than change Washington to do that. I always thought hope and change meant change the direction of the country. He was elected having helped convince people that the country was headed in the wrong direction. Now, what if Biden is smarter than we think?

Because let’s be clear, folks: There has been abundant change. There has been phenomenal change in this country. None of it for the better, or very little of it. I can’t think of anything that’s better. I mean, if I honestly had to sit here and somebody was put a challenge in front of me and said, “You gotta come up with something Obama’s done good,” I would be hard-pressed.

I’m speaking partisanly. The change has been overwhelming. The change has been fundamental. It has been significant; it has been disastrous. So what if Biden coming in, “Ah, we really didn’t change things. We haven’t”? Could that simply be a way of lulling people into believing that what’s happening now is no different than what was happening when Obama took office?

“There’s nothing to see here, and all these Republican claptraps are talking about all this rotten stuff, but we didn’t really change anything. You know, we kind of failed,” as a way of suckering people and lulling people into accepting this as the new norm because it’s not really change; it’s just what is. I don’t think Biden’s that smart, but an advisor might be. Remember, now, we’re talking about psychological ploys that would be utilized on a low-information crowd.

And the thing to remember about the low-information crowd is that none of them know that they’re low-information. By definition, they can’t. They don’t know enough to know they don’t know anything. In addition to that, nobody is gonna admit to being stupid and dumb when it comes to the these things. So the low-information crowd literally has no members if you rely on a show of hands to identify them.

Nobody will admit it.

But we all know who they are. We all know where they are. We all know what matters to ’em, and the Democrats feed into it left and right, and if the Regime wants to sucker people, here comes Obama hope and change. Now, look, it’s a problem because you’re gonna have people like Fournier and the media say, “What the hell is he saying? I mean, you come out and say there’s been no hope and change? Basically it didn’t happen?”

Those are interesting two words to describe “hope and change.” He’s not saying that they failed to change anything. He said it “didn’t happen.” I may be thinking of this way beyond actually where Biden intends it to be. I may be being too smart by half (which is my natural inclination), but it wouldn’t surprise me if this is a trick, because otherwise why say this?

Unless you’re just a blithering idiot, which is something we must seriously consider when talking about Biden — and I’m not joking. I’m not trying to sound funny. He literally is. The guy hasn’t been right about anything in 40 years. He literally hasn’t been right. He’s a great example of what we were talking about early this week or last week about Washington works.

Washington doesn’t work, and he is the epitome of it. Joe Biden’s been in that town 40 years. He hasn’t done anything right, he hasn’t been right about anything, and he’s continued to climb the ladder. The establishment types fail up! So if he hasn’t done anything right, if he hasn’t been right about anything, and yet he continues to gain and climb the ladder, have upward mobility, how does it happen?

It’s because he’s been there, he’s in the club, he’s been there, he knows the people, he can network — and that’s the explanation. I mean, Washington doesn’t work, and the idea that the fix for what ails the country’s gonna come from a place that doesn’t work itself is mind-boggling. It doesn’t work, and he’s the epitome of it.

So it’s not an exaggeration to say he’s a blithering idiot. It’s pretty accurate. Now, he may have some knowledge, he may have an IQ, but he’s wrong about everything. I mean, we talk about, “What is ‘smart’?” I’ve always thought we need to redefine “smart.” How can somebody be smart who’s wrong about everything? Yet Biden is considered smart.

He’s a gaffe-prone smart, but he’s still considered smart by the people in the establishment — and he cares. He’s got the requisite amount of apparent compassion. But why come out and say that the change “didn’t happen”? Unless you are attempting to psychologically manipulate people into thinking that what’s happening now isn’t his fault. Obama hasn’t made anything worse; it’s just the way it was.

Now, granted, you open yourself up for allegations of failure. You came in and you wanted to change things. I’m not trying to cut him some slack. This is so stupid, I’m trying to figure it out. There’s gotta be another paradigm going — or, as another member of this club that fails up that’s a blithering idiot, Prince Charles, talks, “externalities.” Does anybody know what one of those is?

“The paradigm of externalities.” He said that in his speech to a collection of elites inside the Beltway somewhere, maybe it was over the European Union. He was talking about architecture and global warming and the paradigm of externalities. (interruption) Well, I know it sounds intelligent, again, to the low-information crowd, who have no idea what a paradigm is and no idea what an externality is (much less the plural of “externality,” externalities).

So here’s this guy talking about ’em, and he looks smart, and he’s got a good knot in his tie, and he’s got a thin neck. He looks like an aristocrat, and drinks a lot of gin. His liver is still working fine, so what’s to complain about? You try to follow these people with logic and you get lost. You got a guy like Ron Fournier saying (summarized), “What in the world? This is the worst thing in the world!

“He’s coming out here and saying there hasn’t been any change; it didn’t happen. He basically conceded the original sin of the Obama Regime, which is, ‘We promised to at least start changing Washington, and we failed.'” They haven’t failed at that, either. The IRS is getting away with whatever they want to do. The EPA is getting away with whatever they want to do. Change Washington?

The president is acting as though there’s not a Congress! There’s been dramatic change. That’s why I question what Biden is doing here. There has been overwhelming change. It has been stupendous change, none of it for the better. So what better way to not call attention to it than to go out and say, “Yeah, you know what? We tried; there hasn’t been that much,” so that the low-information people simply say, “Oh, well, this is the way it is. Cool.”