RUSH: The Des Moines Register poll that was suspended, and I want to get back to it ’cause I don’t like to leave open loops. The reason this poll was suspended was because, believe it or not, somebody claims that they used an incorrect font size on a Web page, and that resulted in one name — a candidate’s name — not being seen by one respondent.

So one respondent was not permitted to vote for whoever. Because the one name, Buttigieg, didn’t appear. The respondent tells the people of the poll and they cut the whole thing down. They just cancel it. A single Mayor Pete supporter claims that Mayor Pete’s name wasn’t an option during a phone poll. Now CNN’s refusing to release the poll result, and everybody’s wondering what the real reason is, and most of the speculation…

I’ve always known how important polling data is. I remember one time I had dinner with… This is like 1992 or ’93. I had dinner with Tim Russert and his wife, and the moment he arrived, all he was talking about was polls, the latest NBC polls and what it was showing about Perot and George H. W. Bush. I said, “Tim, it’s just polls.” But no, it’s not just polls to these people. To the political class in Washington, polling data is gospel.

Some of them believe it is totally legit and up and up and reflective of public opinion. Others are fully aware that it can be used to make public opinion, to shape it, manipulate it and so forth, which is what I think it’s become. Polling has become a vehicle for creating breaking news — and most of it’s useless. Most of it’s irrelevant. Like, you can’t remember today — 2016, February 3rd — what the polls back then were.

Nobody can. You’d have to go look ’em up. It’s relevant for fundraising and things of the moment, but in terms of actually telling you the outcome of an election 10 months down the road, not much. But this Des Moines Register poll is the poll of polls in the Hawkeye Cauci, and it always comes out Saturday night, the Sunday night beforehand. And when they held it, when they spiked it, why, it was like communion being canceled.

People were panicked. They didn’t know what to do. So they started speculating. “Why did they cancel it?” And you know what? The speculation mostly centered on, “Well, maybe the poll didn’t show the results they wanted.” Now, wait a minute. I thought that shouldn’t matter. Who wanted? In the media world they want us to believe, they don’t care what the outcome is.

They don’t care what the poll shows; they just release it. It’s the news. But we all know that’s bogus. We all know they have a vested interest in the outcome of the polls, and we all know how they shape them with various percentages of Democrat respondents versus Republicans versus independents versus Martians. You know, whatever they want, they can get.

Now, this is a poll done with the Des Moines Register, which is the paper of the Hawkeye Cauci. The Des Moines Register lives and breathes and exists for the Iowa caucuses once every four years. It’s like a restaurant in a town that’s only open for four months in the winter. They stay open the other eight months, but they have to make enough money in the four months of the winter to keep themselves open the rest of the year.

Same thing here. They live and die for the Hawkeye Cauci. And not releasing the poll was a major, major upset. “The Des Moines Register, CNN and Selzer & Co. have made the decision to not release the final installment. … Nothing is more important to the Register and its polling partners than the integrity of the Iowa Poll. Today, a respondent raised an issue with the way the survey was administered, which could have compromised the results of the poll. It appears a candidate’s name was omitted in at least one interview in which the respondent was asked to name their preferred candidate.”

Now, you might be saying, “Well, what’s this got to do with font size?” Well, you’ve got the person conducting the poll. They’re on their computer. Maybe they’re running their website at 110 or 125 percent of normal size. In other words, it zoomed in, and maybe the last name on the list you don’t see unless you scroll because of the zoom-in or enlargement.

This was the original explanation, that the person conducting this particular poll, making this call to this one respondent was listing the names, “Okay, who do you prefer to win the Hawkeye Cauci?” List the names but didn’t mention Mayor Pete ’cause this person didn’t see Mayor Pete’s name on the computer because it was too zoomed in. If the person had scrolled up, they would have seen Mayor Pete’s name. Anyway, the respondent supposedly got hold of the polling unit, the paper, and said, “Hey, I was just polled, but they didn’t read Mayor Pete’s name.”

So this one instance is why, supposedly, they canceled the release of the whole poll. And a lot of people said, “Come on. That’s not enough to cancel the whole thing. What was really going on?” And the speculation is that Crazy Bernie was mopping the floor with everybody. That Crazy Bernie was up by seven to 10 points, and nobody wants that, supposedly, because Crazy Bernie is going to destroy the Democrat Party.

If Crazy Bernie’s gonna destroy the Democrat Party, then Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and the rest of her Squad are gonna destroy the Democrat Party, and why is nobody trying to stop her? Well, maybe they are, but they’re not having much success at it. The idea — and I don’t mean to be redundant here — but the idea that the Democrat Party is some moderate, mainstream bunch of dryballs is a bunch of garbage on a San Francisco street.

This party is as radical left as it has ever been, and it’s been radical left for a long time. They’ve just masked it and covered it up. You know, Crazy Bernie and AOC is the beginning of the unmasking. Now these people running around, “Oh, Crazy Bernie is gonna take the party down.” All they’re admitting is that if somebody actually fully opens up about what – ‘cause you can’t find any difference in Elizabeth Warren and Crazy Bernie’s policies. Or any of these other people.

“Well, Rush, they’re not all for Medicare for All.” Yes, they are. When you get right down to it, they’re for government running everything, folks. I don’t care the degree. Do not fall for the idea that Democrats have some kind of free market wing in there. Every damn Democrat can’t wait to cancel these tax cuts. Every damn Democrat can’t wait to cancel the policies that have resulted in rising wages. That’s the bottom line.