RUSH: By the way, I’ve been holding onto a thing here since July 6th. It’s Mark Penn, had a column in the New York Times with Andrew Stein, and it’s called, “Back to the Center,” comma, “Democrats.” Mark Penn, former pollster for Hillary. I still think she owes him money from her — it might be 2004 campaign. Not this last one, I think. I forget which campaign, but she still owes him money. He was a former pollster for both Clintons back in the nineties. He now runs a polling unit at Harvard which we quote now and then.

He had this piece in the New York Times back on July 6th. “Back to the Center, Democrats.” This piece is about what the Democrats have to do if they want to start winning elections again, which they are not doing. And you talk about a funeral? This column is an illustration of the total futility the Democrat Party faces in terms of winning elections, because if he is right that the only hope they’ve got is to start tacking back to the center and getting rid of some of this left-wing extremism, then they don’t have a chance. And they’re not capable of tacking to the center.

Their base will not allow them to do so, and they’re not inclined to move back to the center. It starts out: “The path back to power for the Democratic Party today, as it was in the 1990s, is unquestionably to move to the center and reject the siren calls of the left, whose policies and ideas have weakened the party.” And he goes all-in blaming Obama for many of the problems Democrats have. And it’s fascinating ’cause this is a guy who knows how to win elections for Democrats, and he will be totally ignored.

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RUSH: I got an email during the break. “Rush, with the health care battle the way it’s going and this and that, why are you spending so much time on the problems of Democrats?” Because, folks, the Republicans have no excuse behaving the way they’re behaving! There is no excuse for this health care thing to be in the absolute convoluted circumstance that it is.

The Democrat Party is in a suicide mode. And I’m trying to document just how out of the mainstream they are and further from it they are getting to the point that the people responsible for electing Bill Clinton twice are taking notice. It’s a golden opportunity that, to me, is being squandered. We have no reason to be deferring to these Democrats at all. We have nothing in common with them. Or shouldn’t.

So, in attempting to portray or honestly analyze the dire straits the Democrats are in — not the media. I understand the distinction. I’m the one that made it, but the media doesn’t run for election, so they don’t win them or lose them, individually. Democrats do, and they are not winning. And they’re going to continue not winning because they are moving away from positions that get anywhere near majority belief. And to me this is a golden opportunity for Republicans to capitalize.

How many times, Mr. Snerdley, in the past, say, 10 years have I said something along the lines of there’s never been a greater time, never a greater opportunity to contrast who we are with what they have become? And it keeps getting better because they keep getting further and further extreme, wacko left. The ability to draw the distinction of who they are and who we, it’s never been better, and we’re squandering it, in my view.

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RUSH: Hillary Clinton — look at this — Hillary Clinton is looking for her next role in the midterm elections next year. Man, I hope she finds one. I hope she finds a big one. I hope the Democrats make her front and center of their midterm reelection efforts. That would be hilarious.