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Published January 27, 2017
This is a RUSH transcript from "The O'Reilly Factor," October 18, 2010. This copy may not be in its final form and may be updated.
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BILL O'REILLY, HOST: In the "Hume Zone" segment tonight: President Obama is doing everything he can to stop the bleeding of the Democratic Party. Taking to the road, his energy level is back.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIPS)
PRESIDENT OBAMA: The journey we started in 2008 was not about putting a president in the White House. It was never just about getting to election night. It was about every day after that, and building a movement for change that endures.
I hope you don't mind. I'm losing my voice, because I'm still fired up.
(CHEERS)
OBAMA: But I got some campaigning to do over the next couple weeks here. Right now, the same special interests that would profit from the other side's agenda, they are fighting back. The empire is striking back.
(END VIDEO CLIPS)
O'REILLY: All right. Joining us now from Washington, Fox News chief political analyst, Brit Hume.
Before we get to that, I would be interested to know what you think of this whole Muslim controversy on the overall arch, because I do think that there is a big, big problem in the Muslim world and, you know, I think it's diminished by the left.
BRIT HUME, FOX NEWS SENIOR POLITICAL ANALYST: Bill, I would simply say this: When you said -- and I heard, I didn't see it live but I later saw the clip of the whole little episode there -- when you said, you know, Muslims attacked us on 9/11, that is unmistakably correct. I didn't take it you mean that all Muslims attacked us on 9/11 or that all Muslims were terrorists or anything of the kind. I saw that as a simple statement of fact and you used that to support the proposition that perhaps it was therefore inappropriate to build that mosque there.
I just don't think that rises -- I mean, Whoopi Goldberg was saying today that she heard herself after you said that accuse you of bigotry and she knew then that she had to get up and leave the set, which is unusual. Usually people react to what other people say. She seems to be reacting to something she had said.
But be that as it may, I mean, I just don't think most Americans would look at and think you were making a bigoted statement. It's a factual statement. I suppose, you know, if you want to be sensitive to every feeling of every possible person in the world, we would say, Muslim, at least Muslim terrorists attacked us on 9/11. But you're right, everybody knows that.
O'REILLY: OK. But the political battle over defining the problems in the world, it always comes back to the left vs. the rest of us.
Now, as far as President Obama is concerned, the Rasmussen Poll today has his approval rating up pretty substantially from Friday. I think it's 50 percent disapprove, 49 percent approve of the president. So it looks to me like him getting out and giving the old rousing speeches that he gave in the campaign is helping him.
HUME: I don't really think so, Bill. I think this is mostly statistical variations in the polling. These polls of his, Rasmussen's daily polls has been -- if you look at it over a period of time, the relationship between people who are strongly favoring him and people who strongly do not is the same as it was a week ago and the same as it was a week before that. So, I don't attribute much of this to his being out on the stump. I don't guess it's done him any harm.
But remember this, Bill. He's out trying to make a sale to the public about his party in this election. He went out for the better part of a year trying to make a sale to the public on his health care plan. And he gave dozens of speeches on the subject. And in the end, he couldn't sell it. He's a very inspiring speaker in many ways and inspirational figure in many ways, but he has proved not to be particularly persuasive in an argument.
O'REILLY: But here…
HUME: And I don't think he's going to be persuasive this time around. I just don't see any evidence of it.
O'REILLY: All he has to do though, according to the polls, the Republican side is much more motivated to vote than the Democratic side. So all the president has to do is motivate some Democrats who are kind of, "I may or may not go out," to go out. That's why I think he's doing that. He just wants to stoke up the base…
HUME: I think that's true, Bill.
(CROSSTALK)
O'REILLY: …stoke up the base, try to get as many Democrats out as he can. That's what the polls say. The Republican are going to go out and the Democrats are going to stay home.
HUME: No doubt that's true. The problem is for him that there aren't as many self-identified Democrats now as there were a couple of years ago. The numbers of people who have gone into the independent ranks has grown and the number of people who've grown into the Republican ranks has grown. So, he is speaking nowadays to a shrunken base.
Now, obviously, if they all turned out, 100 percent, he'd be able to save a bunch of seats. But that would be quite remarkable in a midterm election in which his party and his causes are demoralized.
O'REILLY: But the Democratic ground machine in states like Nevada, Washington state, California is substantial.
HUME: It is.
O'REILLY: And that's what he needs to get Reid re-elected, Barbara Boxer re-elected, Patty Murray re-elected. So, he's targeting those places. You know, Ohio is a lost cause. I mean, I think Ohio is going to go Republican big time because the president's approval rating in that state is 33 percent.
Now, here's my question: Will the president's approval rating in the state, the individual state, correspond to what happens in the senatorial and gubernatorial races?
HUME: Well, there's a lot of history of that and I think that will probably be the case. But remember this about the turnout efforts that you mentioned, speaking of, say, labor unions, that do a good job of turning out voters. The problem is those labor people can't guarantee how those people are going to vote.
Back in the Reagan years, you know, they'd turn out all these voters and a lot of them would vote for Reagan. And I think this is a year in which people are so disappointed and disillusioned that among a lot of -- a lot of labor union members, you know, you turn them all out to the polls and not all of them are going to go your way. So, turn out efforts don't always work the way you hope.
O'REILLY: It looks like Karl Rove was right that there are certain Tea Party-backed candidates, like Carl Paladino in New York, and perhaps Christine O'Donnell, although that race has tightened a little bit, according to the latest poll out there, that simply aren't ready for primetime and that the Democrats will take those seats, even though voter anger in those states is high.
HUME: It's awfully hard to imagine how Carl Paladino, having made the number of gaffes that he's made, would possibly be elected to be dogcatcher.
O'REILLY: Right.
HUME: He's been -- he's been a very unfortunate candidate. Christine O'Donnell has done a little better, but she has a tremendous hill to climb in Delaware. And it's -- I don't think -- it would be -- listen, if we are sitting here on election night, Bill, and then we see that she's won, look out.
O'REILLY: Yes, I mean…
HUME: We are talking beyond avalanche. We are talking massacre.
(CROSSTALK)
O'REILLY: But she is, according to Rasmussen, I think it was Rasmussen, 11 down now. So she's made up some ground. And then Halloween is coming.
HUME: There you go.
O'REILLY: You know, so we can mobilize the…
HUME: The Wiccan vote?
O'REILLY: You said it, not me. Hume-o. I was hoping -- I led you right into that trap. I'm not saying anything like that.
HUME: Yes, you did. I asked it as a question.
O'REILLY: Brit Hume, everybody.
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