When Push Comes to Polls: Anti-Obama Smears

I just received an interesting, almost piquant e-mail message from my friend and fellow anti-nanny Anita Bartholomew. Last year, she guest-blogged for me here at Nobody's Business when I was away for a week.

I received her permission to quote her e-mail in its entirety. I normally place quotes of more than five or six words in indented and italicized paragraphs, but when it's a long text, that results in legibility issues. So in this case, no special formatting. Everything between the orange lines is Anita's e-mail to me, verbatim — her words, not mine. The phone call she describes was placed just a few hours ago.
===========================================================================

The call came in to my home phone number (which is not listed), in Florida, at about 6:00 p.m., today, Monday, February 18, which, appropriately enough, is Presidents Day. The pollster assured me, at the outset, that she wasn't selling anything, wasn't looking for donations, and just wanted my opinion.

Okay, I said. Shoot.

For those who don't recognize the term "push-poll," it's one of the dirty tricks in a political operative's bag. Someone calls, purportedly to get your opinion — in my case, the woman identified her survey company as CCI — but really, the intent is to plant negative information and disinformation about a candidate.

The most famous push-poll might be the one conducted by supporters of George W. Bush during the 2000 Republican primary season. South Carolina Republican voters were asked: "Would you be more likely or less likely to vote for John McCain for president if you knew he had fathered an illegitimate black child?"

McCain, who had been doing pretty well until then, lost that primary and the nomination.

Fast-forward to this evening: It's impossible to say for sure who is responsible for tonight's survey. I became suspicious early on and asked the pollster who had commissioned it. She said she was not told who the client is.

At first, the questions were strictly about my opinions on Barack Obama and John McCain. Did I think that John McCain or Barack Obama would be better at keeping the country safe? Bringing needed change? Handling the economy?

Then, the survey-taker said, she was going to read me a series of statements and wanted my opinion about whether these statements, if true, would raise doubts about the candidate. I was asked to rate any such doubts as very serious; serious; minor; or no doubt.

So far, so good.

Until she got to the first statement:
- The non-partisan National Journal has called Obama the country's most liberal candidate.
- He's for gay adoptions and driver's licenses for illegal immigrants.
- He voted against allowing people to have guns to protect themselves in their own homes.
- He is weak on terrorism and has said he would personally negotiate with terrorist nations like Syria and Iran.

Would this cause me to have very serious; serious; minor; or no doubts about Barack Obama?

It caused me to have very serious doubts about the poll. So, I asked her to repeat the statement. And I began typing notes.

The second group of statements planted the notion that, among other things, Obama is a closet terrorist-sympathizer:
- Obama has accepted contributions from the "Weather Underground," a domestic Muslim terrorist group in Chicago.
- Obama is pushing the largest tax increase in American history and wants to increase taxes on Social Security. This will hurt the pocketbooks of average Americans.

What kind of doubts did this raise, my questioner wanted to know: very serious; serious; minor; or no doubts?

It was probably at that point where I told her that I recognized this as a push-poll. She insisted it wasn't. I let her continue. I wanted to hear what else was on her list.

The next set of statements also included doozies:
- Obama's father is Muslim, and Obama grew up in the world's most populous Muslim country.
- He didn't cover his heart when listening to the national anthem.
- His pastor gave notorious anti-Semite Louis Farrakhan an award for greatness and, recently, Obama stopped wearing the American flag.

Would this cause me to have very serious; serious; minor; or no doubts about Barack Obama?

I repeated my complaint about push-polls but she said she had equally damaging comments about McCain. I asked her to share those.

Here are the McCain-specific statements:
- His proposals all sound familiar because they are all like Bush's policies; more of the same on Iraq and taxes.
- McCain has 59 lobbyists involved in his campaign. He has taken more money from industry than any other candidate.
- McCain said that U.S. manufacturing jobs are not coming back yet he supports NAFTA and supports free trade in China.
- He said we can't afford to invest in kids' healthcare but is giving Bush a blank check for Iraq. McCain has taken a half-million dollars from lobbyists. He supported tax breaks for big oil and killed legislation for renewable energy.

Somehow, pointing to McCain's support for Bush's Iraq policies and support from industry didn't seem equivalent to hearing that Obama is supposedly supported by a group of terrorists in Chicago (no, he's not, in case anyone is wondering — just part of the smear campaign).

There is no way to know whether McCain is aware of this smear campaign. Any interested political entity could have funded it.

It's evident though that this campaign is going to get very ugly — ugly enough to make the previously most famous push-poll question, about illegitimate black babies, seem quaint by comparison.

PS: Re the nonsense about a "Muslim terrorist group" supporting Obama. The Weather Underground was a Vietnam-era radical leftist group affiliated with the SDS. William Ayers, a former member of the Weathermen, aka Weather Underground, who is now a professor of education at the University of Illinois, served on an anti-poverty group's board with Obama and donated $200 to Obama's state senate campaign in 2001.

===========================================================================

Does anyone know what CCI is and, more importantly, who could have funded this lovely little initiative?

For what it's worth, I was called by a pollster last week. When I consented to answering a few questions, the first thing she asked was whether I was associated with any of the presidential campaigns or whether I was a member of the media. I answered in the affirmative to the second part of her question, and that was that. "Thank you, that's all," she said, and hung up.

That reaction could be completely non-sinister, I suppose — but if I was a push-poller, I wouldn't be trying to transparently smear a candidate in a conversation with a journalist or a potentially hostile campaign staffer either. In fact, those are the first people I'd tried to avoid. So in light of Anita's account, now I wonder what was up with my caller ending the exchange before it had even begun.

Then again, Anita, too, is a journalist, and her caller didn't ask her if she had a professional media affiliation. An oversight, perhaps.

Thoughts?

Comments

[wmb]

McCain would have nothing to gain in a push poll against Obama at this time. Hillary would. I suggest her people might be behind it and used the questions regarding McCain to try to make him look responsible.

[Hunter]

Well, why do you say that, wmb? Just because, "Oh my god, we don't even know who the nominees are yet! Why would anyone ever, like, look to the future and start to deal with some or all of the eventualities ahead of time?"

There isn't really anything in there that suggests that McCain's campaign isn't the one responsible. Those are pretty lightweight statements to toss out there about McCain.

[Hannah]

If I remember correctly, when I worked at Verizon CCI stood for Customer Care Initiatives. After a customer had called into the center, the customer would then be called back at some point in a months time to verify that they had had good customer service. I’m not sure if that’s what this “cci” stands for though.

[anticant]

Hi, I sent this link to my friend Emmett Smith [Bodwyn Wook] in Minnesota, and this is his reaction:

http://bodwyn.wordpress.com/2008/02/21/as-matters-stand-now-ten-nights-in-a-boiler-room/

[K. Dale Boley]

Clinton and Clinton Incorporated?

[b]

I had just as many doubts about McCain from those statements than I did about Obama.