"These rallies are the envy of official Washington... There isn't a single elected official in either party who could do what this is tonight, other than Donald Trump. No one! And they're jealous. They are envious."

Rush Limbaugh at last night's Trump rally in Limbaugh's home town Cape Girardeau, Missouri:



"And this isn't supposed to happen. You people are supposed to love them. So guess what? They want to get in on it. Bill and Hillary Clinton and their national stadium tour.... Have you seen Obama? He's been stumping down in Florida, where I live. He's drawing crowds of a thousand people, two thousand people. Joe Biden can't fill a phone booth, because he's looking for somebody to punch out. This [gesturing at the size of the rally] is incredible!... When I first started watching the campaign, I watched the President and his family come down the escalator, in June of 2015, I heard his opening remarks, and I said this is [laughs], there's no way. And then I saw the first polls. And then I saw the first one of these, and I said, he's gonna win, because he has a connection. There is no other politician with a connection to voters like this. Nobody has it. And Washington can't stand it. I'm not kidding. The establishment cannot stand it at all."

I don't know what the actual crowd size for Obama has been (and I've looked), and I don't think Bill and Hillary are calling their tour a "stadium" tour. They're playing in 3,000-seat theaters (and they're charging big money — $59 to $745 a ticket — so it's no mere demonstration of love). But it's certainly true that Trump has set an insanely high new standard for what a political rally should look like. Can anyone else ever do it? Probably no one currently in the picture.

So "official Washington"/"the establishment" must surely hate it, and it's easy and fun to laugh at their dismay. But there are also a lot of ordinary people who don't like Trump and who look at these rallies and wonder what to think about it. The notion will need to be that rallies are bad. Large, enthusiastic crowds don't think clearly and make sound decisions about government. It's mob mentality. A big rally is a dangerous monster. It's scary. It feels like racism. Like Hitler. Etc. etc. That sort of spin is its own monster, gathering momentum and rolling out of control.

But it's election day. The big referendum on Trump. Maybe America will say no, and these crowds will come to represent Trump's limited appeal, a box he's built for himself. But if America says, yes... what then? Moderate that I am, I tend to think America will say... maybe.