Clinton's Ratchets Up Republican Tactics: Starts Push-Polling in North Carolina....

[BlooInBloo]

What a fucking pathetic loser.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/paul-loeb/is-hillary-clinton-push-p_b_98446.html

The questions started out normal enough, but got progressively more ridiculous. Early in the conversation Ed asked my preference among the Democratic candidates and I told him I was an Obama supporter.

Then the questions turned to long Hillary-praising and Barack bashing policy statements with the response options being "Do you consider that a very strong, strong or weak or very weak reason to support her candidacy for president?" which is kind of an unanswerable question, and clearly not the point. At the end of the conversation they asked "Now based on everything we've discussed, who would you vote for?"

The questions were often based on statements that I wouldn't agree with in the first place. It's classic push polling as I've read about it, though never experienced it before. The questions are of the "Are you still beating your wife?" variety. No way to answer with any sense of veracity and integrity.

EDIT: Took out a stupid apostrophe.

[anonymous171]

1. Can we please kick her out of the party?

[StevieM]

13. Not unless you want her voters to go with her. We don't have to stay (eom)

[krawhitham]

14. I can live with that

If they can not see what she is doing they are not needed

[guruoo]

17. ...they say, as they whistle past the graveyard.

[Asgaya Dihi]

28. The graveyard is full

The graveyard has been being filled with bodies from Iraq and elsewhere, with the poor and starved results of our neoliberal policies through the World Bank and IMF, with the insurgancies formed to fight those policies and our death squads to fight them. It's filling with victims of lead or other contaminants in what we buy from China and elsewhere, with a drug war that kills our own at a rate several times higher than when we started and finances the very terrorists we claim to be fighting, it's been filled with those who can't afford health care, it's been being filled for decades now with the failed policies of capitulation and compromise that overtook the party some years ago.

If the cost of change is that those who have been taking us in the wrong way leave rather than help us to change, so be it. I'd rather have them with us than gone, but I'd rather have them gone than to continue to support an increasingly right wing and damaging path. They can help solve it or get out of the way but it is time for change. We've done it their way long enough.

[guruoo]

31. Translation: 'It's all or nothing. We want it all, and we want it now.'

Rotsa ruck.

[Asgaya Dihi]

33. What are you, a neocon? Or just borrowing their tactics cause it worked so well for them?

They like to tell us what we really mean and think too, remember how it worked out for them? They were almost always wrong, almost always made themselves look like an ass, and almost always lost support for it.

That's the tactic you want to try here?

How about I say what I think and why, you cover you.

There are no "in other words to it". If what we've been doing for decades, capitulation and compromise, has left us with a increasingly conservative agenda and none of our own maybe it's time to recognize it doesn't damned work and change course. When they have control of Congress they get most of their agenda passed, when we have control they get almost as much of it passed. Last time we had the White House they got much of what they wanted as well. The dems lost power and seats, the repubs came out of those years stronger and with a more intact agenda than when we TOOK the Presidency.

The difference slick isn't in the direction we go under each parties control, just the speed, or sometimes just the style. It's not about all or nothing and it's rather dim of you to try to reduce it to that level with me. It's about a different direction. There's no damned reason for anyone to change course if we don't demand that they do and enforce the demand if they don't.

[BlooInBloo]

15. Extortion... NIIIIICE!

Let party realignment take place. Let the present-day Dixiecrats fucking leave. We'll be a better party for it, AND we'll win.

[Asgaya Dihi]

27. Bye nt

[yourguide]

2. audio link here:

http://www.twango.com/media/thepolitico.public/thepolitico.10040

[BlooInBloo]

3. Thanks! The HuffPo one didn't work for me, so I didn't emphasize it!

[GodlessBiker]

5. I'm glad the person (you?) tied up the interviewer for so long.

[MidwestTransplant]

6. That guy is painful to listen to.

and your photo of Hillary looks like a cocker spaniel for some reason.

[barack the house]

4. ..

[terrell9584]

7. Actually, these are tactics that are standard in southern politics

and they have been used in Democratic primaries, especially in ones where the nomination means the same thing as being elected.

And I would assume that it is something that is common in Arkansas, and that they probably used them in Arkansas at some point.

This is not a statement of approval or disapproval, this is just pointing something out. In fact, it is now a common practice to do artificial push polling, for a campaign to actually pay for push polling that attacks them, with the idea that they can then attack their opponent for "going dirty" and then have a rationale that they are only "fighting back"

[BlooInBloo]

8. Southerner support of push-polling noted. Thanks!

[terrell9584]

9. I seem to recall saying that

"this is not a statement of approval or disapproval"

If I am going to say something, I come out and say it, I don't make inferences. I honestly think it is a dirty trick, but I have also seen so much of it that I am used to it, and as much as I hate to admit it, it works more often than it doesn't, because there is usually a side willing to stoop that low, a side that is not, and the side that stoops the lowest usually wins. After the hurricane, would you believe that use of the hurricane in the nastiest ways possible became a part of standard operating procedure politically. It's not a bad strategy, if people's passions run high about one thing, it is that storm, but it is also an appeal to the most base, gut of emotion.

That being said, I'll be honest when I say, finding out that someone was an insurance adjuster during Katrina (especially if they were one of the ones who denied payout to victims) would be an automatic disqualifier in my eyes in terms of voting for them. The same for insurance executive, policymaker, etc. Too many friends and family were hurt in that storm and for me, it is something that inspires anger.

[BlooInBloo]

10. Yes, you did utter those words.

[guruoo]

18. Exactly. Need to find out who paid for it

[JackORoses]

30. the 'poll' was conducted by Geoff Garin's company

He is Hillary's new Chief Strategist.

[AtomicKitten]

11. How much do I hate her? Let me count the ways ....

Democrats need to cull the DINOs and take out the trash ...

:grr:

[guruoo]

19. At least you're up front about it.

[OhioChick]

12. K&R

:kick:

[Leftist Agitator]

16. Let 'em push poll in NC.

The stupid fucks don't seem to realize that that is the absolutely wrong venue to pull that kind of shit. Maybe Indiana, but what with its proximity to Illinois, I'd doubt that too.

Oh, Clintons... Who are you, and what have you done with the real Bill and Hillary?

I'd like to think that you aren't (and weren't) the sleazy fucks that the Right relentlessly accused you of being a decade ago, but I'm starting to wonder.

Over and out.

[kevinbgoode]

20. Ah...so this is her idea of campaigning for the Presidency?

No wonder the farthest of the Right wing Republicans have fallen in temporary love with her.

[Cali_Democrat]

21. Next they'll say Obama fathered two black children

[ballinchain6]

22. This is what the whiney Barry Hussein cultists are cyring about...THIS?

This is nothing.

and keep up the Hillary slandering as DU descends deeper and deeper into the filth that is Obama Underground.

Good luck in November as 30% of Hillary supporters go to McCain, with the rest sitting out

talk about a bunch of glass jawed crybabies.

[SoxFan]

23. Wow, that was Walt Starr fast!

[HCE SuiGeneris]

32. Spent all that time registering just to get a cookie...

:9

[BenDavid]

24. well good for her. damn obama needs to grow a pair and stop

being this pink tutu wearing cry baby....

[anonymous171]

26. Sexist.

[WillYourVoteBCounted]

25. I wonder if she won't just come across as an emasculating type?

she reminds me of a really really bad mother in law.

Barry, eat your vegetables!

[smiley_glad_hands]

29. Who needs repugs when you have DLC triangulating centrists like Hill? eom