I Just Got “Push Polled” by Hillary Clinton’s Nevada Campaign
This article went viral in February 2016 and has since attracted more than 600,000 hits. It was quoted in the Daily Kos. It certainly upset many Sanders’ supporters who feared the worst about Hillary Clinton and her campaign tactics. This is one of the reasons Clinton lost the general election to Donald Trump 8 months later. Pissing off Sanders’ supporters backfired.
Mudslinging works. That’s because some mud usually sticks, no matter how filthy or detestable it is. We all say we hate “going negative.” Then, we eat it up. No one gets out of a spirited political race with a bleached white suit.
From Nixon to LBJ, from to Daley to JFK, from Bush swiftboating Kerry to Bush bullying McCain in South Carolina — history has taught us one simple and indisputable fact. Election victories often come down to doing whatever it takes to win.
The Hillary Clinton campaign now appears willing to resort to just about anything — including using underhanded campaign tactics in order to reverse the national tide turning against her in the four early primary states (and state caucuses). It’s readily apparent that her campaign has begun deploying one of the sneakiest tricks of political survey methodology. It’s called “push polling.” If you don’t understand what I’m talking about, I’ll get to that a bit later. Meanwhile, by all accounts, Bernie Sanders continues to run what’s generally been a positive campaign without attacking his opponent. I’ll eventually explain why Clinton’s troublesome practice of establishment politics, as usual, could be the difference in gaining the nomination unless more people rise up and express outrage against these disputable practices.
Here’s what prompted tonight’s essay, written in the heat of the moment and while taking notes of what transpired, which should raise serious questions. Namely, has the Hillary Clinton campaign gone over to the dark side? For those who suspect that I’m a Clinton-hater, nothing could be further from the truth. I’ve written glowingly about Sec. Clinton many times and even gone so far as to call her “the most accomplished woman in American history.” Even with these recent revelations, I’m about to disclose, I continue to stand by those words of high praise. So, this is hardly another exercise in the national sport of “Hillary bashing.” The rest, you can judge for yourselves.
_____
At about 6 pm tonight, my home telephone rang. I was expecting an important call from a service repairman. So I picked up the call without looking at my caller ID. Turned out, it was a political pollster.
INTERVIEWER: “Hello. May I please speak with Nolan Dalla?”
ME: “Yes, that’s me.”
INTERVIEWER: “We’re polling residents here in Nevada tonight to see how they feel about important issues facing the citizens of Nevada. Mr. Dalla, do you have a few minutes to share your opinions with us?”
ME: “Sure, why not? Go ahead.”
After being asked a series of basic questions about my race, gender, income, education, and so forth — that’s when the political stuff began. At this point, I wasn’t sure if I was speaking with a national polling firm, a media outlet, one of the two political parties, or someone working directly on a campaign. It could have been any of the above. I hadn’t paid attention much at the start of the call. I’m not even sure the caller said her name or identified who she was working for. However, once the questions turned political, the real reason for my Friday evening phone call became obvious.
I was asked several questions about the two Democratic candidates. Oddly enough, not a single question was asked about Republicans. So, this call was probably coming from a polling and research firm that was hired by one of the campaigns. With only two Democrats still in the race, that meant I was likely receiving a phone call disguised as a “poll” by people who were actually working for either Hillary Clinton or Bernie Sanders. Given the establishment politics practiced by the Clinton campaign, I immediately suspected that my “pollster” was probably a paid staffer or someone with a so-called “research” firm working to change the minds of voters in support of Clinton. In fact, as a possible Sanders’ supporter, I was probably their intended target. They hoped to reach voters who were leaning to Sanders, then ask some pointed questions framed to raise doubt about the candidate, which might sway votes in the caucus — which is about two weeks away.
However, sometimes the hunter becomes the hunted. The staffer manning the telephone conducting the interview had no clue who she was talking to.
To make certain I was worthy of their time, the first series of questions dealt with my likelihood of participating in Nevada’s state caucus, coming up on Feb. 20th. My response was that I was 100 percent certain I’d attend my local caucus. Had I stated there was no chance I’d attend, the phone call probably would have abruptly ended much sooner. It also worth noting that the interviewer was clearly reading straight from a script. Trouble was, she had terrible difficulty saying one particular word, which was kind of critical to our discussion. The keyword was “CAUCUS.” She kept on saying “Cou-cous.” Just imagine a badly garbled mispronunciation of “couscous” at some restaurant called “Ali Baba.” I almost laughed a few times but was able to contain myself. I might need “ammunition” later on.
I was asked favorable and unfavorable ratings on a 1 to 5 scale for Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton on a variety of different topics — things like the candidate’s experience, ability to deal with the economy, foreign policy knowledge, civil rights, immigration, etc. At first, the questions were pretty benign. Whoever devised the script did a pretty good job making things appear, at least initially, this was an unbiased telephone call with legitimate intentions to measure “public opinion.”
I gave Sanders high marks in most categories. I gave Clinton high marks on experience (I gave her a “5” and Sanders only a “4”) but much lower scores on standing up for the working class, taking on the big banks, fighting wars in the Middle East, and so forth. That’s where Clinton’s record is, at best, spotty. At worse, it should disqualify her among progressive voters.
Things were about to heat up. Big time.
INTERVIEWER: “What best describes your political affiliation — Democrat, Republican, or Independent?”
ME: “None of those describe my politics. I’m a socialist.”
INTERVIEWER: “But you have to pick one. Should I mark down that you are an independent?”
ME: “No, because I’m NOT an independent. I am completely opposed to the two-party system. I want multiple political parties. And, I’m a socialist.”
INTERVIEWER: “Hmmm, okay. So, what if I were to tell you The Washington Post said that Bernie Sanders’ campaign promises would cost more than $20 trillion and would raise everyone’s taxes — would you now be “more likely’ or ‘less likely” to vote for Sanders, or has your opinion remained unchanged?”
ME: “That’s not accurate at all. I read that editorial last week. I could tear that completely to shreds. How much time DO YOU HAVE? Let me to set the record straight and explain to you how The Post post misrepresented several of Sanders policy positions.”
INTERVIEWER: “Ummmmm. Uhhhhhhh. So, would you now be “more likely’ or ‘less likely” to vote for Sanders, or has your opinion remained unchanged?”
ME: “My position remains unchanged because the premise of the question isn’t just misleading. It’s wrong. Do you understand that?”
INTERVIEWER: “Uhhh, what if I were to tell you The New York Times expressed serious reservations about Bernie Sanders being able to work with Congress and described him as ‘divisive’ — would you now be “more likely’ or ‘less likely” to vote for Sanders, or has your opinion remained unchanged?”
ME: “You mean Sanders would be more divisive than Hillary Clinton? Huh? Seriously? Has the esteemed New York Times been paying attention to politics in this country for the past 25 years since the Clintons emerged as national political figures? Besides, I’ve been quoted in the New York Times six times, at least that I know of — and twice they misspelled my name. Now, you think I give them my credibility?”
So, this minor bickering goes on back and forth for about five more questions. I sense this is the interviewer’s call from hell. She’s going to be busting my balls in the break room in about 45 minutes, complaining about the asshole she got stuck with who knew every fiber of the shit sandwich she’s trying to peddle like a tasty Reuben. The last bastion of hope I had this call might still be fair-handed and would address some of Clinton’s hangar of political baggage as big as the United Airlines counter at O’Hare Airport evaporated when her “questions” turned to how I planned to caucus in two weeks after hearing these biased narratives about the two candidates.
INTERVIEWER: “How likely are you still to COUSCOUS for Bernie Sanders if you knew that he blocked gun control legislation five times as a U.S. Senator?”
ME: “First, let’s get one thing straight. It’s CAUCUS. Not COUSCOUS. Got that?”
INTERVIEWER: <SILENCE>
ME: “Hello?”
INTERVIEWER: “So Sir, how likely are you still to (another mispronunciation of caucus) for Sanders if you knew that he blocked gun control legislation five times?”
ME: “Have you read why he blocked that legislation multiple times? Do you know anything about the United States Senate? I do. I used to work there, you know. Want to hear more about how bills get passed?”
INTERVIEWER: “So, are you still likely to vote for Bernie Sanders?”
ME: “Um, take a wild guess — yes.”
INTERVIEWER: (getting flustered and now trapped on a call she can’t wait to end) “How likely are you to still caucus (she gets it right — finally) for Bernie Sanders if you knew he blocked immigration reform six times as a U.S. Senator?”
ME: “What are you talking about?”
INTERVIEWER: “It says here he voted six times against immigration reform. That’s all I’m supposed to say.”
ME: “You are a disgrace to politics and to progressives. Do you see what you are doing? You are trying to frighten Latino voters and completely misrepresenting Sanders’s voting record. Do you realize that? Do you know what you are doing? Nevada has lots of Hispanics and you are push-polling a question designed to scare Latinos about Sanders. Isn’t that right? Admit it.”
INTERVIEWER: <SILENCE — SOUND OF RUMPLED PAPERWORK>
ME: “I could destroy any one of your arguments in just a couple of seconds….You aren’t a pollster. You are a fraud. You are a pretender, and I’m going to expose you. What’s your name? Tell me your name and who you work for?”
[Side Note: By the way, I almost began cursing — but decided against going that route. I wanted to keep her on the line for as long as possible, in order to learn more about what was going on.]
INTERVIEWER: “I’m just asking questions, Sir.”
ME: “No you are not. You are asking negatively slanted questions about Bernie Sanders. Go back and look at your questions again. So, who do you work for? I want names.”
INTERVIEWER: “Maybe I should have my supervisor call you back. Would that be okay, Sir? Let me take down your phone number and have my supervisor call you. That’s what we are supposed to do when we get asked questions which deviate from the question and answer part.”
ME: Yes, by all means — have your supervisor call me. I’ll be waiting. I’d love to talk to your supervisor.”
Three hours later, my phone has still not rung. But, I did manage to write up this scathing expose on WHAT’S HAPPENING NOW IN NEVADA.
Hillary Clinton’s Presidential Campaign is resorting to one of the lowest, most reviled tactics of campaigning, the sludge known as the “push poll.” It’s clearly happening in Nevada, and probably other states, too.
What makes this so reprehensible is that many voters will not be able to discern truth from fiction. They will conclude the “poll” feeling they were important enough to receive a phone call mistakenly believing they were asked fair questions and they were left with lingering doubts about the viability of Bernie Sanders as a presidential candidate.
Unfortunately, this garbage has a proven track record. “Push polling” went into the gutter in the worst kind of way 15 years ago, in South Carolina. John McCain, then known as a “maverick Republican,” posed a serious threat to George W. Bush, clearly the establishment candidate. In what became a political gauntlet for conservative Republicans and the Bush Campaign, the vile henchmen led by Karl Rove (and supposedly “independent” Super PACs) began conducting “push polling” among registered South Carolina Republicans. Hundreds of thousands of phone calls were made asking “poll questions” about McCain which amounted to a well-disguised political assassination. McCain never recovered and Bush easily won the nomination (in 2000).
From Wikipedia: “A semi-underground smear campaign (began) against McCain, delivered by push polls, faxes, e-mails, flyers, audience plants, and the like. These claimed most famously that he had fathered a black child out of wedlock (the McCains’ dark-skinned daughter Bridget was adopted from Bangladesh; this misrepresentation was thought to be an especially effective slur in a Deep South state where the race was still central, but also that his wife Cindy was a drug addict, that he was a homosexual, and that he was a “Manchurian Candidate” traitor or mentally unstable from his North Vietnam POW days.”
As I stated, “push polling” works. Gullible voters get confused and start doubting their allegiances to a candidate. Even if a small percentage switches their votes, a couple of hundreds of voters can mean a big difference in a tight political race. The Clinton-Sanders race isn’t just tight. It’s a dead heat, at least here in Nevada.
When the phone rang earlier tonight in my home and someone secretly working for the Clinton Campaign thought they were talking to someone gullible to manipulation who might ultimately change his vote. They have, in fact, do the opposite. They lit a fuse. Let this be a WARNING and a cautionary tale that these are PRECISELY the tactics Bernie Sanders is working against, and fighting against within his own so-called “party.” It’s the kind of tactics Sanders is working to end. We need to support him. We can no longer have “politics as usual.”
In the end, push polling and negative campaigning might actually end up making the difference in the Democratic race. The cynic in me remains pessimistic as to how many people out there who receive despicable phone calls like this will be equipped with the knowledge and experience to see through the bullshit. I’m hopeful that writing this essay might open a few eyes.
It’s now 1o pm. More than four hours have passed since the supervisor was supposed to get back to me. Still, the phone hasn’t rung.
Nevada voters, next time your phone rings and it’s a poll, beware. It’s probably not a poll. It’s something else. It’s old-style establishment politics of the worst kind, that were once used by one of the worst political machines.
It appears that the Hillary Clinton Campaign knows no moral nor ethical boundaries.
UPDATE: I have since asked for a public statement from the Hillary Clinton campaign either confirming or denying a connection to these tactics, which is posted HERE.
UPDATE: ABC News posted an article with an audio recording of a similar call, so it’s happening elsewhere. CLICK HERE TO READ.LISTEN.
Postscript: “Push polling” appears to be a common practice by the Clinton Campaign, as evidenced by this 2008 story in The Los Angeles Times. LINK HERE
Writer’s Note and Full Disclosure: I am working actively for Bernie Sanders’ Presidential campaign as a volunteer. I have also contributed money to Bernie Sanders’ presidential campaign. His campaign, at least here in Nevada, to the best of my knowledge — is NOT resorting to “push polling.”
TAG: Push Polling
TAG: Nolan Dalla writings
TAG: Nolan Dalla push-polling controversy in Nevada
TAG: Hillary Clinton push-polling
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I know for facts, don’t ask me how, thousand readers come to this website and so few posts, we should do better!!!
I would love to see more posts, more comments.
No, I am not a troll, and I am not his mama.
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One: This was awfully hard to read. It contained too many run on and incomplete sentences.
Two: you should have hung up. Don’t be rude to someone just doing a job.
The “just doing a job” argument went out around 1939-1945.
That’s ridiculous. This man spent his time purposely insulting a minimum wage worker who had absolutely zero control over her assignment. If he really was a compassionate socialist he would have told her he didn’t wish to continue and to have a nice day so she could get back to work.
Oooooooooooooooohhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh, BERRRRRRRRRRRRRRN!
This wasn’t Nazi Germany, for God’s sake. She was a girl reading what she was told to read.
He abused and harangued her. He should be ashamed.
He also has no idea who was actually polling. He made assumptions based on his own biases.
Possibly it was the GOP searching for weak spots in Bernie’s campaign. Maybe it was a SuperPac, of which the candidate has no control.
Anyway, his abusive conduct of this girl was shameful, and then he vents further abuse on a woman, of whom he has made gross assumptions with no proof at all.
I am disgusted with this, Bro’.
Word.
How do these people know that the interviewer was on minimum wage? How do they know it was not a supervisor teaching minimum wages earners how to conduct a “push poll”?
Sounds more as though these negative comments come from pro-Clinton campaigners.
Note how none of them make any effort to deny the reality of this “push poll?
What kind of jerk is Joe Sly? Suggesting, as he does, that it is OK to conduct downright nasty and unethical telephone polling, if you pay minimum wages to the polsters – is that for real?
excellent response.
If she didn’t know what she was doing and was just doing her job as some have suggested, then she is a huge part of the problem. Being a participant in a criminal activity in any way is criminal… she participated and therefore she is the problem. Play it any way you like but being unaware is never an excuse or a reason for doing the wrong thing. Bottom line she was as wrong as the Clinton campaign.
Not the same and please don’t insult those of us who lost significant parts our families by comparing ANYBODY to the Nazis.
If this was indeed someone working on minimum wage, then it says even more about the Clinton campaign.
Doing her job? Harassment? Leave her alone, and allow her to continue manipulating voters opinions based on lies? Wow, you are all the reason this democracy is going to shit…
BOOM!!!
Yaa, da Germans were da masters (race) of it.
You went full Hitler *really* early in the thread.
Its just some woman on $5 an hour reading a script. Your assigning working class people more power over their lives than is realistic to expect. She could say no to push polling, but she’s likely got rent to pay, bills to pay, perhaps even kids to feed.
We’re not talking nazis pushing people into showers here, and godwining the argument is just silly and falicious.
Liadan – “Maybe it was a SuperPac, of which the candidate has no control.”
Are you kidding. That is the biggest crock.
They record videos for the SuperPac commercials, they direct the SuperPac to do get out the voted ground operations and lots of other things.
Tell me how that is “No Control”.
It’s all illegal, even under Citizens United, but they do it anyway, because nobody calls them on it.
Kudos to the author for his small effort to educate another on what is right and what is wrong.
Be polite to this person “just doing their job? Really. The best thing to do is waste as much of their time as possible. Think of it as doing a good deed. The longer they’re on the line with you the more time they are NOT bothering someone who might actually buy their bullshit. This article was excellent in that it should lead to someone calling out Hillary or Bill at an on-camera press conference about whether or not they approve of push-pulling. Make it a net-negative for their campaign. If it ends up losing more votes than it gains for them, those people will not only lose their “jobs” but that sort of “job” will go away. Next best thing is to get one of those push-pull
callers to talk to a reliable member of the press … if they can find one. Hello?!?!?!
All the campaigns do push calls..
Every one. Its a part of the way to get info. Bernie’s people do it too.
Holy fuck, how do you go Godwin on a telemarketer conducting a political poll?
The minimum wage earner isn’t a disgrace. The minimum wage probably can’t fathom that she’d be instructed to do something illegal.
I get Nolan’s frustration and why he lashed out, but he probably should have asked for a supervisor 5-10 minutes sooner and definitely should have known better than to trust a shady polling company to have a supervisor call him back. You insist on a transfer or to wait on hold until one is available. At that point, it isn’t even to lambaste the supe, but to get as much information about the illegal operation as you can.
Thank you for saying that to that person. They are everywhere trying anything they can to discredit anyone not praising the low class actress shill.
To start, I loved this article almost as the comments. Additionally, I think “Full Hitler” is obviously too far, but “Full Milgram” is probably quite apt. Its crazy to me that humans forget even the most important of the lessons of the past in about a half a generation.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milgram_experiment
Given the conversation that took place, I can only assume that the girl (employee) is not from the United States. The responsible, adult thing to do would’ve been to hang up politely, then contact the Sanders’ campaign.
Don’t insult any one who lost someone to the Nazis? Do you know why Bernie’s family came to the States? The fact that Hillary’s campaign is resorting to the Big Lie is what should offend all of us.
Who released you from the responsibility?
When did the mass of humanity start saying “It’s not up to me!”
Please point to those responsible for the “It’s out of my hands” attitude.
“What do you want me to do” is not a question, it is a dodge.
Why it is “OK” to stand by and let outsiders be harmed?
It is no longer a question of “What would you do”, nope, its’s up.
The mass of humanity sets on the sidelines and watches the world go by-
Have you built a safe little world of tunnel vison for yourself, on TV, the internet, your environment?
“I do not want to talk about it.”
“I am powerless.”
“I give up, what’s up?”
Well it is you…You are what’s up.
Yes I hold you responsible.
Anyone that accepts that they are powerless is a liar.
Yes you are a liar if you think you have no power.
You are no longer given a pass on not giving a shit.
It is pointing at you now, the finger of blame.
Close your eyes the finger is still pointing at you.
I did not know, is now “you refused to learn about it”.
Guilty are those that are ignorant, that can learn, when the information was available.
Read about it; ask the informed, go on line and or, Google it!!
Ignorance is no longer a release from liability.
The truth is your action, or lack of any, the Judge is reality.
A jury consists of the conscious part of you that finds and recognizes understanding.
A defense represented by lies, hidden facts, and misinformation is powerless in a court of the truth.
Prosecution knows, you, your lies, and or your complicity is the crime of not being on the side of the truth, of what is right, what is real, the facts.
Feel the pressure, good it could save lives, and act, you might yet save yourself.
This is your warning; Life is real, wake up.
Didn’t take long to get Godwined…pretty lame
He mentioned a few times he was attempting to extend the call to identify the agency issuing the poll. There are worse things to be guilty of than making someone feel uncomfortable for 10 minutes.
As someone whose worked on the other side of the call, she is not paid. She was most certainly a volunteer supporter looking for experience in the field. These people are never paid unless the candidate literally has no volunteers. I got fifty bucks for two months of full time work this summer, with dozens of people getting the same or less. She very likely DECIDED to push-poll, DECIDED to use her time to do this to people, and could quit anytime, without a single economic repercussion, I assure you.
Why not hit *69 to get the number she called from and call it back? You might not get any answer but you’d get the number and could go to your local Clinton office to complain.
You could also have asked to speak to her supervisor right then. No delay. Makes sense to ask and if not forthcoming, you have more evidence of improper behavior.
Bernie pays the interns who work for his campaign $12 per hour, he is the only one of the presidential candidates who does pa interns.
How was he rude, the guy called him remember? Asking for his opinion my gawd the anti-bernie arguments are horid. Should have just used the free pixie dust and Unicorn argument the rest of the right wing seems to favor
Don’t you think that’s besides the point? And don’t you think she should know what she’s doing is wrong?
I totally agree , push pulling is so low handed which i would expect to be a dirty clinton tactic , i see on this site the clinton trolls are out in force , yes he was right to question the caller i would to
It was a ‘she’ who called ‘he’, and he, out of respect for any semblance of integrity and decency, did exactly what anyone else with a shred of brains and regard for democracy would do, with all due respect.
Exactly. She intruded into his home and should be ready for the consequences, which includes knowing what she is talking about. Not a credible representative of Hillary if that is what she is trying to be.
Hillbots usually do not get paid and it sounds like they don’t get trained either..I think you did the right thing..now they can HATE on me for a while..Kudos for the Tips #FeelTheBern
Wrong. That person choose to do that job. They choose to represent that candidate and should be held responsible for that decision. They are not released of responsibility because they’re getting paid. If that were the case I’d take a job as an assassin…it pays well.
absolutely, we choose our own path every single moment. make the right choice starting today and let the record be forgiven and the record file under well-meaning mistake in judgement.
I used to have a job doing phone surveys. You do all sorts of surveys. There was one I did with some odd questions near the end, and years later, when I first read about push polling, I wondered if that’s what I’d been doing. But a) it hadn’t occurred to me that there was such a thing at that time, b) I knew nothing about the politics in the state I was calling, and c) if a and b weren’t true, was I supposed to quit the poorly-paid job I had to run out and get a different poorly paid job because I was stuck doing a push poll?
Treating strangers badly over the phone, who have no power and thus can be abused freely, is a dick move, pure and simple. People are struggling to make ends meet, and they can’t all pick and choose the perfect job. I suspect most of the people who think it’s okay to treat a stranger like crap don’t have to work shit jobs.
As for the person who actually went ahead and used a nazi reference to defend being an ass to a guy who does fucking phone surveys for a living, you do not have the moral authority to judge *anyone* *ever*.
The person who willfully takes a job that involves cold-calling people at random and disrupting their day for cash is the one making the “dick move.” Take responsibility for your actions instead of framing this terrible job as something that just kind of happens to people.
Most aren’t getting paid at all – these poll type things can also be done via phone banking with free volunteers too.
Don’t be so quick to guess that she’s got a min. Wage job, and yea she would have a “supervisor ” ; whoever is heading up the office…
Or it could be a real poll too.
It could be either
Agreed & the perfect example of that is the Internet trollers on the Koch brothers payroll who aggressively attack anything that supports alternative energy orCO2 reduction. They are guilty of social irresponsibility, and twice as guilty for getting paid to do it! Not sure how they sleep at night…
I also had a job once upon a time where I did surveys. Most of the time the surveys were fine and I had no issues with them, but there was a push-poll for the NRA that I REFUSED to call on after the first phone call I made (I wasn’t given the script to review beforehand).
I wasn’t fired. I didn’t have to quit my job, either. My boss put me on another script.
If nothing else, be educated and have standards!
I worked the phones on the McCain campange. We did not ask questions like that. AND WE WERE VOLUNTEERING oir time. There are a lot of members of the womems Republicsm ans democratic parties that volunteer many hours. This may have neen one of them. That could ne ehy a Supervisor did not call back. It became immeterial information
Dear Rosylyn..for you and your berniebot female friends..You must be so proud that the Republicans are laughing all the way to the White House. They see that American women, having gotten so close to actually breaking the ultimate glass ceiling, are easily intimadated by the question” You wouldn’t vote for Hillary just because she’s a woman would you, you silly girl”..despite the fact that Hillary is the most accomplished and capable, qualifeed candidate in the bunch….you are going to vote along with your girlfriends in your own worst interests..you deserve the whirlwind..When I fought a very public battle for women’s workplace rights)see wiki Christine Craft, I was so grateful for those women who had bravely gone before me and made my path not so lonely.. The current generation, ill-educated, and thinking feminism is “old school”…deserve nothing of what I fought for , nor my american female gutsy forebears…pity ..btw, as you will learn, should you be successful in getting a wild-eyed bolshevik to the nomination, Roe v. Wade is unfortunately on very shaky legal ground(yes I’m a lawyer, see mythical”penumbra of privacy rights”) all is takes is one good case and one new SCUS justice…I’d say “good luck”…but that would not be my true sentiment.
You’re very wrong. People are responsible for what they do on the clock. If they weren’t I’d take a job as an assassin…it pays well.
Exactly!
I had this job. What I did on the clock sucked. I had to pay for medication, food, and housing. Medication that keeps me alive. Your argument is elitist as fuck. Do you want us to just refuse these jobs when they’re literally all that’s available? We didn’t volunteer to live in a corrupt capitalistic society. But we do have to stay alive, and sometimes that means taking shitty jobs that are against our values in this corrupt society.
“I had this job. What I did on the clock sucked. I had to pay for medication, food, and housing. Medication that keeps me alive. Your argument is elitist as fuck. Do you want us to just refuse these jobs when they’re literally all that’s available? We didn’t volunteer to live in a corrupt capitalistic society. But we do have to stay alive, and sometimes that means taking shitty jobs that are against our values in this corrupt society.”
I had this job, too. I refused to participate in push-polling because it conflicted with my personal standards and ethical practices. I did not lose my job. In fact, my boss was understanding and just put me on some other, actual survey script. You DO have a choice.
Steoh, if you didn’t get fired, that’s great. People do get fired for refusing to do this stuff. I ended up losing the job because I had to spend a week and a half in the hospital (it was a job I took to pay for meds–meds I need to stay alive). I had a seizure at work (happy international epilepsy day, btw). Do you think that companies like this care about their disabled employees?
Please remember that not everyone has the same life experiences you do. I’m a queer disabled woman, and I’ve spent over half my life in poverty. I’m certainly not a shill for the Clinton campaign. I will stand up for people who have to take these shitty jobs, though. I will ask that people check their privilege when they say that folks should just quit their jobs. This isn’t Nazi Germany. Call center employees aren’t sending people to the gas chambers, and that comparison is fucking disgusting. These are people doing crappy jobs that allow them to buy life necessities. God, I had a respondent try to have phone sex with me. I still wasn’t allowed to hang up. I just had to ignore him while I continued with the survey. If I could have asked my boss to let me switch to something else, I would have.
At the time I worked this job, I was choosing between meds and rent. I was eating less than a meal a day. I was asking for help from a family that had disowned me because I’m queer. Desperate times. Check your privilege.
HB —
I’m sorry your life is filled with so much fear and consequential suffering.
Does the Clinton campaign even have enough supporters to have a volunteer staff of pollsters? Ha. They had to have been paid people. Minimum wage and by the sound if it fairly uninformed. I struggle for work and would never take that job. Be more likely to sell Christmas trees off a lot seasonally while being jewish in faith. Anyways. ..with the obvious mispronouncing of the word caucus over and over, i question if it was someone getting paid a nickle in a foreign country! It would cost too much to pay an American for this. Sad.
BAD YR. FOR HILLARY AMERICAN PEOPLE DONT LIKE THE CLINTONS ANYMORE LOTS OF SCANDALS EMAILS AND BENGHAZI . CLINTON WANT POWER AGAIN AND THEYRE CORRUPT. ALSO WE OTHER CHOICE;; IF NOT HILLARY OR BERNIE HES AN INSIDER PLUS HE WANTS US TO PAY 90%TAX?// WILL VOTE TURMP THE RIGHT CHOICE HS SELF FUNDED PLUS HE CARE ABOUT AMERICA-
Thank you! I had to do this for a living in 2008, and I quit after a month because of the constant tirades from people. For the sake of everyone caught in minimum-wage hell, remember that we’re human too.
I had a job stealing from people, legally. I figured out that it was bad, and that they berated me for telling them lies. IMHO, if you do a job that gets people to regularly tirade against you, it isn’t them, it’s you. It’s a horrible thing these people do, and when you do horrible things, people say horrible things to you. Go figure.
You have no way to know how long this person had been doing this. It could have been her first week. She could not understand what she was doing (as the person above mentioned). It’s not a good job. But it’s a job. Worked by people trying to make a living. They are not the bad guys. Be upset with the higher up people. Educate and help the workers.
It occurs to me that the real power of a campaign is to engage those who agree with a candidate to support him or her, not to resort to paying those uneducated or desperate enough because of economic misfortune to conduct a deliberately misleading “poll” – here’s again an example of how far astray our democracy has been led by money taking priority over values. To complain that the author was rude to the caller assumes it’s okay for the caller to remain ignorant, uneducated and working for an employer who is exploiting her situation on purpose to achieve their own sell-serving goals. A perfect example of why it’s in our best interest to support Bernie if we want to restore our democracy.
I did the call center thing as well when I just needed the money and quit after a few weeks, not because of people on the other end of the phone being mean to me, but because I suspected the employer was dishonesty pocketing the money we were being told we were raising for charity. Also, I discovered it was the least fortunate who were most likely to be generous (also more easily exploited) something the employer probably already knew. Just doing your job is not an excuse when what you’re doing is wrong – and if you don’t know any better, then the person on the other end of the phone is doing you a favor to stop you and clue you in.
Working on a Republican push poll earned me about a hundred “Go to hell” rebukes. Interesting that it was Bill Clinton’s brilliant policy to require welfare recipients to jump through numerous hoops, among them work when there were none to few jobs in the state. Hillary also proudly delights in naming welfare recipients as lacking dignity when they opt to parent absent employment. I read that she is largely supported by middle aged women who are college educated. Please explain how a call center worker whether a volunteer or a paid employee could maintain his/her job if he/she deviated from campaign ideology even to agree with the call recipient’s point of view?
Seriously? we’re going to tiptoe around people’s feelings that call us up and run a scam. Bullshit
Did you read from a script and have absolutely No Idea if what you read was true or false? Did you make phone calls for a candidate you did not support? Did you break the law with what you read, by falsely accusing someone of things they never did or said … Also Called slander and malicious gossip!!
Why in the world would anyone “take it easy” on someone who knowingly slanders and plants malicious gossip about another person, on such a huge scope as phone banking?!
And I’m positive that woman wasn’t working at the only phone banking site set up by the Clinton Campaign. So, how many more people are actually spreading that Malicious Gossip all across Nevada, from the Clinton Camp?
Alex, he wasn’t being rude. He is exposing this manipulative tactic so that folks can be ready when they are being targeted. Thankfully, Bernie voters are more likely to be informed on the issues more than other voters as WE are going to be the government and part of the revolution of change.
fURTHERMORE; I believe he did the right thing by LEADING the person TO UNDERSTAND she was hired to parrot a script
My take away from this is: the average voter will not know enough of what’s happening around them to realize they are being swayed in any direction. When people of various ages were polled and couldn’t say who our Vice-President is or which side won The Civil War……….we are in deep ? folks!!
That is the most humorous comment on here yet. You won’t be part of anything because Bernie will not win.
Love how this guy assumed it was someone from the Clinton campaign. You know what they say about assumptions? Makes an a$$ out of you! #nomorebern #Imwithher
Amen to that. Thanks.
It was quite easy to read. He wasn’t being rude. She was being deceptive.
Are you crazy! Just doing their job, do you excuse a hit man for murder because they were doing their job. This is a deceitful practice and should be investigated any candidate caught doing it should be disqualified.
There’s a joke;
1: What do you do for a living?
2: I’m a puppy killer.
1: OH MY GOD!
2: Hey, I’m just doing my job.
1: How did you get that job?!
2: I applied for the puppy killer positon.
LOL!
We choose our jobs. If you choose to lie to, intimidate and coerce people, you deserve whatever you get
Spreading lies you would take a job or volunteer to spread untrue facts to deceive people…What the hell is wrong with you…Despicable and so are you Alex
One: I had no trouble.
Two: I think we know who works for them.
Is that you, Dickhead Inthesand?
That is a very patronizing way to look at people! Of course everyone is responsible for their own actions. If you take a job you are personally and morally responsible for the consequences of that job being done.
Agreed. I left a position because my supervisor told me to target people of color for high interest credit card offers. The over $20/hr+commission was not worth sacrificing my ethics. NOTHING is worth sacrificing my ethics actually.
Seriously? THAT is what you take away from this article?
Wow…
I believe some of the attempts at education were a waste of time, although there is nothing wrong with calling out a push-poller. But he absolutely should have made every attempt to find out who this person was working for, when that information was refused then “open season” is officially declared. “Just hanging up” would not have been the correct action.
Why should he have hung up? The person just doing their job? That sounds like what certain guards and generals said a few years ago.
Grammar police
Two:You
Ye without sin cast the first stone
This article linked a phone call to the Clinton campaign On an assumption. It also could have been from a super PAC – which is outside a candidate’s control. Or, maybe if you had given Hillary higher scores, the questions would have been slanted negatively towards her.
If you really believe super pacs are outside of a candidates control, you must be a relative of Chris Christie …. who didn’t have anything to do with a bridge closing and people dying because of it…
Alex You are sympathizing with the “pollster”, I get it. But what about the people who have their time wasted thinking they were doing a poll? They have every right to be pissed when being obviously deceived, and even worse, manipulated. There’s no excuse.
I like how the Hillary Bots have turned this away from Hillary probably using even more horrible tactics, but into the person who received the deceiptful call should have just “hung up and shut up”. Wow.
Lol she isn’t just doing a job. She’s working for Hillary. That’s not “just a job”
Just doing a job? Are you kidding me? Everyone is personally accountable for what they do. This is sickening.
Great post. I did not about this practice, but I sure do now, and I will make sure everyone I know learns about it too. Thanks for putting your anger to good use. Well done.
That’s idiotic, they were not “just doing a job”, they were LYING and using dirty politics.
This is one of the most thoughtful, focused, informative articles I have read to date. I am sharing it widely. I just came back from a day in New Hampshire, canvassing for Bernie Sanders.
I think the whole thing is a crock. She was reading off a paper and had limited options, and most likely, a volunteer. I made phone calls for Obama and we had certain questions but we were never insulting or demeaning to anyone we spoke to, just questions and answers. But to be sure, we were calling Democrats from the data base.
Thank you for canvassing for Bernie! 🙂
I had no trouble reading it and comprehending it at all. Perhaps you didn’t like the content?
Do you really not see anything wrong with what the staffer was doing??
Firstly, he said he wrote this in the heat of the moment, so there was probably less editing done. Read it for the content. Secondly, this Hillary staffer has no idea about the issues and should know just how dishonest her tactics are. That’s not being rude, that’s being truthful.
So can we take it that “just doing a job” makes everything ok? What kind of slug are you. Do you not understand the meaning of integrity? This is the precise attitude that is the root of all the corruption in our world. You should be ashamed.
Clinton is determined to spoil, cheat and rig her way to the Whitehouse, and she will use every dirty GOP tactic in the book, as demonstrated in her ugly, racist campaign against Obama in 2008. Clinton’s push polling is desperate and unethical. As for the swarm of inane comments here that attempt to undermine the writer of the article by insulting him while completely ignoring the tactic of push polling, the Clinton campaign is known to employ a large staff whose job it is to troll the comments sections online. They are now teeming like lice on every online news and media site. Fortunately, they are easy to spot, because the content of their replies will be reflexively moronic and off-topic. Ignore them.
I think this article must have went way over your head if your worried about punctuation and run on sentences. And saying don’t be rude to someone just doing a job? That is priceless! This so called interviewer was doing just what this man said, spreading lies and untruths to sway an election. If you missed all of that you must be a Clinton supporter and you don’t care what underhanded, dishonest, or illegal tactics she uses to get elected.
A tool is a tool, fuck them and the horse they rode in on…I hate a cheat.
Right? Dolan was a total jerk to this lady who was just trying to make ends meet in a call-center.
no he wasn’t, she’s not the victim, she’s the accomplice
Someone who took on a job with the purpose of spreading misinformation. Yeah let’s justify that. You’re worried about syntax and run-on sentences. I’m worried about the state of my country. Get out of here.
Seriously, this. 99% likely this person was just reading a script and works for a polling firm.
I love the irony of a socialist giving a member of the working class shit just because he felt like bullying her.
No Harry he felt like exposing and dispelling the lies.
Oh, yeah. And I suppose if Hitler or the trump-kin was a woman, not supporting them would be sexist no matter what they do or represent too, correct? How much are you getting paid to belittle and discount someone standing up for integrity and ethics. I realize that her evil trolls have neither as well, but do all the trolls on here really think the folk with decency and integrity will be swayed by such cheap, narrow pseudo arguments? I’ll bet that lots of us know all about p.c. fake passive( or not so very passive ) aggression and how your kind uses it.
What? Doing a job? So deceiving is ok if you are doing it as part of a job? Does “my boss told me to” excuse someone from doing something that is just plain wrong? Of course not! Ignorance regarding your actions is also not an excuse. The caller cannot get out of it by saying: “I didn’t know those were deceiving and misleading questions” No!
This guy Nolan looks to be at least a grown man…he could not just say no thank you and hang the phone up? He had to be rude and crude….? All the candidates do this kind of polling…and always have. Goodness, I guess he can pass the purity test?
I don’t see how asking questions and answering questions honestly was being rude and crude.
Uh…if your job is to pose as a survey taker to gather negative polling data, then this should be considered part of the job. If you are doing your job on my phone line, I will react in anyway I see fit.By the way, the lowest form of life online is the grammar nazi.
Hogwash!
His obvious bias as a Bernie supporter was palpable and of course (insert sarcasm here), we can believe everything he said. You know what I got out of this? That’s he’s a jerk, full of himself and an a$$. #Imwithher
You are saying if anyone is just doing their job we should let them be even if the job they are doing is causing great harm and is intended to slander someone? Seems like you and a few more people in this thread are exactly the type of people who will be given such jobs and will comply as long as you are paid to do the job, right?
When the individuals “job” is to misinform the public, they are doing a complete disservice to that very same public. The Democrats are supposedly the party of the ” Little Man” and ” Fair Play”. Accordingly, when a Democratic Party candidate resorts to the very same tactics that are employed by the Regressives every individual leans towards the Democratic Party has the right to call those that use these totally unethical deceptive practices out.
Trust that you can understand these thoughts and that you do come to realize that many people get really pissed off when they are insulted by an individual that is pissing on their shoes while trying to explain that it is raining.
It is probably a mix, they were probably getting paid minimum wage or less, but they were also probably doing it because they are a young political idealist. I’ve been a political footsoldier so to speak, canvasing etc. And usually it is young people doing it who don’t have a solid idea of the complexities of what they are dealing with. Getting a solid hosing by someone who has way more information could only be positive. They will rethink what they are doing and who they are working for, or they will go find more information so they will be more successful on the next call. Either way, if someone is going to call your house and try to change your political opinion, they are fair game for an argument.
Agreed, it sounds like the woman on the phone was nice enough. I’m sure she had good intentions even as she was making the morally corrupt choices.
Personally, I would have taken a moment to tell her how wonderful she was, and how well she was doing her job, and then ask her where she was calling from, maybe something like “I’m no expert, but a lot of your questions seem to be a bit one sided, where are you calling from again?”
She probably was a wonderful human being just trying to help a cause she believed in. She was just a bit misguided. One way to teach her would be to make her feel so shitty about what she was doing that she quits and feels like a loser, the other would be to help her realise her mistakes best you can help her feel empowered.
You are so right. Nice, polite. Get the info, get the number, then publicize. Anything else is slander, speculation. Makes me wonder about competence, I don’t care where or who you’ve worked for before. Bernie isn’t interested in white elitists. This is not what he’s about.
Loveliest answer! xx
Troll
Push Polls usually aren’t even paid. They are volunteers that want to help with a campaign, and whomever is supporting the calls brings the supporters to “help” on a special assignment. That’s usually why they’re so nervous. My cousin has done this on half a dozen campaigns. And she said he’s lucky, because a lot of the time, they’ll get nasty back.
Yes, sometimes, it will be hired call centers, but as someone who worked in a call center, and dealt with LOTS of angry callers, it is not harassment to ask questions, demand answers, or even call them out on their bullshit. They have the ability to hang up as well, and if they are working for a specific candidate, it is usually encouraged, since there is no way to call them back.
This is directed at everyone who is “outraged” at this conversation….Particularly, “Joe Sly” and “Liadan”..GET THE HELL OVER IT. People can be adults, and speak to one another any way they like….especially when they call your home to attempt to trick you. If they don’t like the “harassment”, they can hang up.
Heaven forbid someone try to get someone else to use their brain and try to think logically and critically about what they are doing.
Yup… I hope he feels really great for badgering some poor (likely minority) woman making minimum wage at a hillary call center… this article will read like the author is a hero to anyone who is a sanders supporter and like an a-hole for his treatment of the caller to anyone who is not…
AND PS dear author – if you’re a socialist that makes you an independent. Just because you don’t want to be grouped with that group of people politically doesn’t change the fact that if you don’t believe you’re part of the two main parties or any one party in paricular, you’re an independent…
And I still don’t understand why Bernie is not called out more for running a a democrat when he is not… has never been until I guess apparently recently he joined for the sole purpose of running for president…
To everyone who’s cheering this on and saying “how do you know she was just doing a job:”
I did this job. I did this job because I’m disabled and couldn’t get another job. My meds cost almost my entire monthly SSDI, and I couldn’t pay rent. So I did this shitty job. I hated it. I dreaded those times someone would qualify for a poll or say yes to a poll. I hated it. I knew I’d get the kind of abuse, or worse, the author used against this poor worker. Everything in this article is elitist, from the mocking of the pronunciation of caucus to the assumption of the caller’s political views. And elitist socialism is one of the saddest ironies I’ve ever encountered.
When I did this job, I wasn’t allowed to go off script. I wasn’t allowed to write down answers that weren’t in the multiple choice provided on the computer screen. I wasn’t allowed to tell the respondent that, yes, I am smart enough to see that this poll is corrupt, I hate doing this for a living–but I’m literally doing this TO LIVE.
Please, just be kind to people who have to have these extremely shitty jobs. Please don’t assume that we’re doing them because we enjoy them. Would you work in a call center for fun? I’m not a Hillary supporter. My politics are further left than Bernie Sanders’, though I’ll probably be voting for him in my state’s caucuses because he’s the best option for me. The author’s behavior was terrible. It wasn’t a victory for socialism. It was just a guy making someone’s day worse. There’s nothing to praise there.
I’m an avid Bernie supporter and I see the irony of another Bernie supporter belittling and berating someone who is probably trying to make ends meet. We should be for the underdog. He could have spoken to her politely and handled the situation in a better way. Instead he probably left this girl with a very bad taste for Bernie and his supporters. I thought we were the compassionate members of society.
Bernie is an idealistic loser who only won first time because UV students voted him as mayor
he will not win, but at least he doesnt provide fodder to the GOPtards
oh I am going to caucus for him and bet you do nothing but sit on your ass, (im being paid min wage to say this so its ok)
Many years ago when I was still a teenager (more or less), I worked for a telemarketing polling company. I remember one NRA campaign I refused to call on because it conflicted with my personal beliefs and views. It was an ethical dilemma for me. Fortunately, I had a boss who wasn’t a jerk and I did not lose my job over it. Either way, I feel bad for people who are forced to participate in this kind of behavior.
So you are okay with mass deception and lies? No wonder we have a shrinking middle class and the richest country in the world with ramppant child poverty, destruction of our aquifers and waterways throughout the country
Do you see what is going on here? Obviously NOT. Please spend more time on learning the truth and fact checking and less time on social media being wrong and helping spread the insanity!
The ‘pollster’ could have hung up too. If they are in fact “doing a job” (as in, getting paid for it), they’re paid by the hour, and they get a bonus for ‘engaging’ a voter. I don’t see how the poster’s behavior interfered with them doing their job. In fact, it seems like it was the opposite of rude.
Polls like these have to be monitored for quality control. If the caller were to hang up on someone they’d have to be ready to justify it to a supervisor. The interviewer in this article sounds inexperienced and probably just wants to do a good job.
At the call center I work at we get hourly wage plus incentive, which is a tier system based on the interviewer’s score… Which is a number derived from a plethora of attributes like the number of completed surveys each hour compared to the hourly average, time spent idle, poor quality assurance scores, exceptional quality assurance scores, etc…
So, hanging up is usually only an option if someone refuses to answer questions or is abusive, and spending more than the normal length of time on a survey with a difficult respondent can negatively impact the earnings of an interviewer… Capice?
Assumptions…
Did you not understand the article? It was about push polling by the Clinton campaign and educated me about a dirty political trick. It also lets people know what is the intent of these calls. I so enjoyed when he turned the table on her and started questioning her. So if my phone rings I’ll be ready. Thanks Mr. Dolla.
I agree
Bravo!
What part of bull crap politics and one sided questions, are you having a problem with? I thought it was a wonderful exposé on the corporate shill.
right? life sux ass for these push poll workers. don’t blame the messenger. they just want a paycheck.
Spreading lies is not “just doing a job”.
Hung up? Assuming the story is true and accurate as reported, that person was committing a fraud by using persuasion techniques based on false information, in order to influence (actually, mislead) the most naive voters and thus hijack the democratic process. There should be a way to identify the source of such calls in a way that can be used in court.
Hahaha thank you, this poor woman who clearly was not even American (hence cous-cous) and she gets this self-righteous douche making political porno out of her probably making 8 dollars an hour at a call center to feed her kids.
Regarding cous-cous… I don’t know if that mispronunciation proves anything. In a media study we do at my workplace I have heard a number of people pronounce “savvy” as “suave-y”. It’s one of the most annoying goddamn things ever. These are native English speakers, to be clear…
No, you kinda need to be truthful with these pollers. Best possible tactic is to keep them on the line as long as possible to prevent them from polluting others. Even better outcome is they feel dirty and don’t show up for the next phone bank session.
Or else Sanders’ supporters, without Bernie’s permission because you won’t get it, should start polling with questions like “given Chelsea Clinton is married to a Wall Street hedge fund manager who made millions from bad investments of other people’s money, is Hillary really the best candidate to end corruption on Wall Street and in DC?” How about: “Even though Bill admitted to what amounts to criminal possession of marijuana, isn’t Hillary’s criminalization of pot, even for medicinal use, hypocritical at best, and possibly fatal to vets with PTSD and chemo patients who cannot maintain their weight without it?”
#notmeus
Agree. Why get on your soap box and start a fight with someone who is likely a volunteer with no hand in the campaign? What a bully this author is.
Alex:
One: It’s awfully hard to find what you consider a run-on sentence here. Please list one to prove your point.
Two: Is this post about grammar? Or have you, perhaps, missed the main point?
Three: Could a person with poor grammar skills–which is definitely not the case here–have something important to say despite saying it in non-standard English?
Four: Is it important to take note of dirty political tactics like push-polling, in this case, by the Clinton
campaign?
Five: Does the writer point to a parallel case in the very dirty campaign used against Senator McCain?
Six: Are you old enough to vote?
To quote Cool Hand Luke:
Calling it your job don’t make it right boss.
Apparently, she was not “just doing a job”, she was conducting a dirty tactic. In that she has a job. By the way, had she been working for Bernie, she would have been making $15/hour, not minimum wage. Since it was dirty politics, what proof do you have she was not paid much more? And Alex, It was the right thing to do to keep her on the line as long as possible so she could not go to the next call, preventing her from doing her worst [not her best]
Apparently all the dirty tricks, lies, and cheating didn’t work so well last night.
Bernie Sanders 2016!
This young woman “just doing her job” is probably going to vote. If she has bought the false information in the scripts and has chosen to work for the Clinton Campaign and is willing to spread said false information to others, the person on the other end of the line has every right to correct her. It’s our job as informed voters to correct anyone who would lie, whether they know they are lying or not. Not only do we have that right, we have that responsibility. Maybe this writer was “harsh”. Ignorance must be exposed and informed. I think most people knowing what is at stake in this election should get angry when the phone rings and they hear these wrong messages. This is serious business folks. Just because you call yourself liberal and socialist doesn’t mean you have to “take it easy” on manipulative, ignorant liars.
I am wondering if people would have been so polite if this girl had been selling double glazing, or possibly push polling for Trump . True it’s not her fault but how many of you can truly say that you have never been annoyed at a caller, who thinks that just because they say they are something then turn out to be something else have a right to pester you in your home. This kind of cold calling for votes and character assassination is reprehensible, and although as yet not illegal is morally disgusting.
Oh and let me get this staright she was just doing her job and it’s not her fault .
Oh here’s a scenario for you a Person is hired by an internet fraudster her job is to trick you on the phone to give details that will allow them to empty your bank . Who’s fault is it and who would bare the brunt of the law if caught. 1/ the employer for employing someone to do this 2/ the employee for doing a job that was obviously a scam .
Imagine this was your Bank account they had just emptied would you still say ” She was just doing her job ” I think not .
Really, just doing their job? Great article. Sorry to those that can’t understand compound/complex sentences. PTS
I’ve worked on a campaign before making calls and they get paid well over minimum wage. If you are going to work on a campaign you should very well know what you’re talking about and expect to get questioned on your facts. If not you should look for another job.
So someone calls me at home and harangues me with annoying, manipulative questions, and I’m not supposed to be mean to them because THEY’RE GETTING PAID TO DO IT?
I’ve always liked Bernie Sanders, but his supporters are sounding more like Trump supporters than liberals. He and they seem to have only one message (income equality is important, but not the only issue facing the most powerful person in the world) And Bernie loves to bring up Hillary’s vote for the Iraq War (along with 22 other senate Dems) but is defensive when anyone brings up his many votes against sensible gun laws, including the Brady Bill. I think this writer (who I have never heard of) needs to find a new tactic against Hillary, cuz this one isn’t working.
No he shouldn’t have just hung up. He should have probed for more information. What they are doing is wrong, regardless of who they are representing. Representing yourself as “conducting a poll” and then asking questions that are very obviously slanted is grossly dishonest.
You are an a–hole! The girl was just doing a job. You are a good example of the BS BOTS that try to destroy other people. I’m getting the same from Karl Rove SuperPAC and their questions are just as gamed to get the correct answer. BS is just that, BS, and obviously so are you.
He was keeping her on the line as long as possible to slow down their work, it’s a good idea. The longer she is on the line with a bernie suporter, the less time she has to influence an undecided voter. It’s not rude, its smart.
Totally agree. I got a job at a “market research firm” during the 2008 election after being unemployed and homeless due to the recession. This was far from the first job I applied for and I needed it if I wanted to not continue a downward demise. The job was polling and surveys…and most were legit. A few times I had to do push polls, and I guarantee I was the only person working on the phones who knew what a push poll was. So I will bet money that poor woman he abused had no idea she was doing anything wrong. She probably knows nothing specific about any presidential candidate as she is more worried about how she is going to put food on the table or find childcare tomorrow or get home from work at midnight with no car or pay her landlord or stressing about driving her car an hour in freezing temps with no heat and a broken window (all things I heard people vocally worry about when I worked at the push poll place).
Save your energy for the asshats that are orchestrating this shit, not to barely survive like min wage workers you so easily abuse, but to gain more and more power.
As a volunteer for the Sanders campiagn I can tell you we have never been asked to use this kind of underhanded method. When someone tells me the are a Clinton supporter I say ok have a great evening, thank you for your time.
Exactly!
We aren’t supposed to argue their choice, try to harass them for it, or even demean their candidate. Just point them to the website for Bernie if they ever wish to look into his record, thank them for their time, and let them off the phone.
… Perhaps it’s because we volunteer to do it. We aren’t paid to sling lies. We are free volunteers, doing a job we feel will better our world.
I now know how important is. Boy did he really stick it to that idiot who has trouble pronouncing a word. What an idiot she is right?! But seriously most likely it’s a woman in a call center who is trying to provide for herself and you were a classic pretentious douche to the wrong person. I vomited twice reading this. I hope next time you write anything for the NYTimes let it be about local hot spots to grab food for under ten dollar. I am a Bernie Sanders supporter and you are a self absorbed know it all and you have know idea how toxic you are to his campaign.
WHAT! Your kidding right? YOU seem self righteous and “absorbed”!
There was a lot more to this story than the mis-pronounced word! Push polling is rotten to the core and the working person who is using that technique is doing a lot more serious damage than the author did to her feelings. People need to take responsibility for what they do as paid campaign staff or volunteers.
To be fair, the caller is probably some kid volunteering and doesn’t even know what push polling is. She’s just reading from a script, doing what she’s been told to do. She didn’t invent push polling, she may not even know what the hell she’s doing. She probably doesn’t even know the facts….. Posting this as it happened is totally the right thing to do, but to blindly vilify the pooor kid ( who doesn’t even know how to say caucus, never mind what it means!) is just being an egotistical prick (how many times does he mention how much he knows?). Once the push polling started, he should have immediately asked for her supervisor, asked which company she’s calling from, ascertained exactly who she was working for. Instead, he really showed HER who was boss ( some high school kid trying to support a candidate she thought was good, or a minimum wage kid trying to earn a few bucks… Versus HIM !) but instead decided to rip into her and demean her. WTG, big guy.
Neither you nor I know the exact particulars about the caller but you’re turning a minor issue in the article into a major issue and ignoring the major issue. If he was a little impatient, he may have hurt one young woman’s feelings. Meanwhile untold numbers of her co-workers are misleading voters and caucus goers on matters of international importance.
I applaud him. Perhaps, with his insistence that this woman actually educate herself and perhaps realize exactly what she was being asked to do, he may have made her question the ethics of her “script”. That, in my opinion, is a good thing.
You sound exactly like a Hillary tool attempting to ‘go undercover’ and confound an important and admittedly emotional bit of first hand reporting (go ahead, argue about the word). One of Hillary’s primary tactics is to linguistically reframe her positions without actually changing them. She’s all pasted on smiles as she lies about Bernie’s record and dashes off to claim the high ground on positions she doesn’t hold.
The ‘pollster’ sounds exactly like an employee of Hillary’s campaign. I don’t give a shit if she says couscous or caucus and if the author needs to include that fact to gently dispel his ire or even vitriol, so be it. The rest of the evidence and his conclusions are relevant and important.
Maybe you believe in and want to perpetuate the Darwinian organization of society. Hopefully you and your ilk are in the minority and will not prevail. The ranks of real Bernie supporters is swelling by the day. GO BERNIE!!
She hasn’t said one lie. Bernie has no real record to speak of after 24 years as part of the establishment. That’s FACT, not fiction. Typical Berniebot, in denial, wool over eyes. No thank you!! #feelthebernout #Imwithher
May wanna go to a gastroenterologist there friend, or possibly you’re just a drama queen. Jimmy, you’re just a bit too off base to give your screed any credit, sorry.
If you work in a call center, you are exposed to far worse. If you take any of it personally, then you should get another job. It’s not the person on the other end of the line being mocked, it’s the actual sleazy strategy. Why would the poll taker care what the response was, unless they are paid for desired results. That would mean they work for really scummy people.
If this is a young volunteer on the phone for a campaign, then she was being done a favor. Clearly, if she is being fed this bullshit that required her to follow a script, she’s not thinking for herself.Maybe she heard some truth for the first time.
lol I love the way he “casually” included how he has been quoted by the New York Times.
Agree!!!
Thank you very much for this effort. I don’t know how to do this, but I will continue to donate $ to support this.
Aweeeesommee comment…yet the definition was stellar!
#IfeeltheBERN
Cool link. I just signed up!
Or this whole article is one big lie. Maybe.
I do object most heartily about this abuse of a person reading just what she was told to read. Isn’t Bernie for the little person just trying to get by…well *this* was one of those people.
Was it really necessary for you to waste her time, harangue and disparage her?
Make assumptions with absolutely no facts to support it, just biases.
*Your* conduct says more about you than it does about Hillary and her campaign.
Thank you. It should also be noted that these callers must state who paid for the call. As long as the person is on the line you have to say who paid for the call.
I’m not sure where you’re from, Jackie, but that’s only true in, I believe, three states. In the vast majority of the country we do not have to identify who the clients are, and most times they don’t even tell us… Though many times the project name/code is indicative.
Even when we must/can identify the clients, we can only do it after the survey has been completed (or terminated) or else the results are considered biased.
Sndbaird5@gmail.com. These remarks probably have nothing to do with Hillary Clinton’s campaign. This is more likely from the GOP.
I read the whole thing, and I don’t see anywhere in there that the writer demeaned or belittled the poll-caller. I DO see where he thoroughly demolished the slanted points the caller was trying to sell. It is FAIR PLAY to ask a caller from a campaign if they actually know what they are talking about. Saying that “Bernie voted against ‘Issue A’ 5 times” is practically meaningless, without the background on WHY Bernie voted against ‘Issue A’ all those times.
There’s no point in arguing with someone who is paid minimum wage to read a script and code the responses into a computer.
The point of message testing campaign statements is to see what the initial, off-the-cuff reaction of people is… So that they can create the most effective television ads. It’s not meant for people who have or want in-depth analysis.
I shit you not, I once had to read: “If you heard during the course of a political campaign that candidate ___ _____ says that he does not beat his wife, but she’s blonde and bruises easily, would you be more or less likely to vote for him?”
Legal? Sure… Ethical… Hell naw.
“I got bills to pay… I got mouths to feed… There ain’t nothin’ in this world for free…”
Just a story to back up Hillary Clinton’s dirty campaign tactics.
I am white, 72 years old and a staunch Liberal Democrat. I am originally from Pittsburgh Pa. I lived 2 blocks from the Western Penitentiary. Our neighborhood was poor, very diverse. I got along with AND fought with kids of all colors and creeds. No prejudice there.
More than 50 years ago, I moved to Eastern Pennsylvania tp a very close-minded, pro-gun, white region. The motto was, “If you ain’y much you ain’t much”.
I was a rural mailman in this area for 40 years. About ten years ago, before I retired, I had over 600 FAMILIES on my route. ONE was black. TWO were Latinos.
In 2008, when I was on the fence, trying to decide between Clinton and Obama, I received a flyer in the mail. As a mailman, I knew that flyer went to many, many addresses on my route.
The flyer depicted Hillary Clinton’s smiling face surrounded by a sea of WHITE faces. Not even one “token” black or brown face.
The message: “I SHARE YOUR VALUES”.
Needless to say, I voted for Barack Obama.
My conclusion: Hillary Clinton is a devious and dirty politician. She will say and do anything to win.
the wild-eyed bolshevik has only one message, robotically delivered in a loop, “Eat the Rich”.
So…. what that run on of dribble boils down to is that they wanted to know if he was voting for Bernie and he said yes. The rest is strictly “i’m going to show you that I think I am smart”
completely wrong – they were hired becasue they told hillary campaign, ” we are so smart we can con sanders voters to drop him”
Working in this industry, I think it’s more likely they were hired because someone wants to figure out the most effective way to manipulate ignorant voters via (television) advertising and (negative) campaign slogans.
Pass the popcorn!
Right on!
I did like your conversation you had with this woman and you handled it very well. I don’t write lady, because a lady would not lower herself to do an interview as this one was conducted on behalf of “Shrillary”. I just recently read the book “The Clintons War on Women” by Roger Stone (IMO *****)and reading about her foul mouth talking like straight out of a trailer park to Bill and anyone else. I would like to read more comments of you here. BTW, I give every month 100 to Bernie from my meager SS since Sept. A sacrifice well worth it. Hope he wins Nevada with your help and will do my part here in FL.
real change can only come if all Americans participate!
IF YOU DON’T VOTE THEN DO NOT COMPLAIN! For consideration by every voter?
We mostly agree that how election are run is no longer acceptable but beyond stopping super- packs and their attempts to buy influence We surely need to look at the outdated voting process itself and the resulting low turn out to vote… participation by all is required to turn around this country…so lets consider real changes?
Mandatory Voting required by all of voting age in Presidential Elections {waived only by written medical evidence}
Automatic fine of $200 to all non-voters { collected fines go to US Vets Care?}
Presidential Election Vote held over two Sundays with voting hours running at the same across the country regardless of time zones!
No more election decided before many Americans actually vote
Any thoughts?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki
Well done, emotional piece. In the aftermath of Citizens United, there is no way to tell if this call was from a Political Action Committee, or the Campaign. It is naive to think that at some point a Pro Sanders group might not go off the reservation this way. It’s like this to me:
Share this video
http://youtu.be/SjbPi00k_ME
For that matter, it might be dark money from the right, in an Operation Chaos type tactic. Ratfucking knows no one party, and with all this anonymous money around, all sorts of nefarious people are doing shit. I wish, btw, that the writer had gotten the name of the org. You can track some of that down.
Nope, Sanders supporters will never have to resort to that, because everything he says is true and everyone who hears the truth about him likes him. All of the other candidates are corrupt and have to resort to lying. If Hillary had any integrity she’d just drop out.
I can prove otherwise to what you claim about sander’s supporters and I have the documentation to prove it unlike this story.
Uh, then do it? Your way of trying to threaten the person you’re replying to, trying to belittle his opinion, says more about you than it does him. If you wanted to prove him wrong, all you had to do was do it. But to mention that you have it and keep it for yourself? What does that prove? Idiot.
I actually don’t think this was her campaign that did this… I wouldn’t be surprised that it is a republican campaign or super pac that is actually doing this to make it look like her campaign. I read this essay and the writer still cannot confirm who the caller is working for. So, without that verification, I wouldn’t put a lot into it.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/paul-loeb/is-hillary-clinton-push-p_b_98446.html
Good point! Most pollsters will hang up if anything like this starts. This one didn’t.
Give your head a shake. It was definitely her campaign. Just as it was her campaign that started the birther against Obama in 2008. When I watch her operate, I am constantly reminded of House of Cards. She would fit right in.
Id love to see someone record this. Ive heard several reports like this from people called by Hillary campaigners now and its time it gets exposed and on the news. This is outright lying and fear mongering to trick people into voting for a candidate. It doesn’t get any more disgraceful and manipulative than this.
I now know how important is. Boy did he really stick it to that idiot who has trouble pronouncing a word. What an idiot she is right?! But seriously most likely it’s a woman in a call center who is trying to provide for herself and you were a classic pretentious douche to the wrong person. I vomited twice reading this. I hope next time you write anything for the NYTimes let it be about local hot spots to grab food for under ten dollar. I am a Bernie Sanders supporter and you are a self absorbed know it all and you have know idea how toxic you are to his campaign.
Intentionally misleading voters is serious business, Jimmy, and there are ample call center jobs for this woman if she is providing for herself and family as you suppose. There was nothing pretentious about schooling someone on a topic they either don’t understand or are manipulating.
If it’s someone’s “job” to lie to and mislead the public, then they deserve whatever lashing they get!I would’ve done the same.
The poor script reading girl probably had no clue as to what is actually happening in politics, she just wants her paycheck ( of maybe 10 bucks an hour? )
Mr. Dalla made a joke in this article about the NYT spelling his name wrong. You repeated their mistake. We’re all fallible, so no harsh judgments to follow, but I though you would like to know.
How can we get this type of story out and into sanders mouth? Like he’s pushing the goldman sachs thing? Thats working.
I see this story potentially as powerful as that one. I think sanders can get real mileage out of this narrative. It just reinforces her anything to get elected reputation. But languishing here in cyberspace it serves no purpose whatsoever.
I’ve been push polled when George Bush ran against Ann Richards for governor of Texas. Got two calls and called our county HQ and was told about how push polling works. Karl Rove was just proving his value to Bush by smearing a wonderful person. No Democrat should ever do this shit.
You are right on the mark. Thank you.
We are hungering for honesty, clarity, decency, knowledge of Washington machinations and commitment to we, the hard working people of this fine country. I was going to vote Republican, then I was for Hillary BUT BUT BUT now, after listening and reading carefully, I am so excited about Bernie Sanders, who I will certainly vote for.
I will also certainly vote into Congress representatives who are for WE THE PEOPLE like Bernie, as well. The USA can be decent, fair and wise once again!
#feelthebern.
WELL DONE. We don’t need this kind of crap in politics. HRC is a classless fraud who will use any tactic she can to win. Lie (about emails) – Lie and Push Poll about Bernie – Win “Coin Tosses” in Iowa. She is a lying fraud. Period.
Dalla
Article is OK however you could argue that you Re using the outlet to promote Bernie Sanders so who is push polling now??
This article is a “push poll” in favor of Sanders to the reader. I are smart.
Thank you for the educational article. I will be sharing to pass this information along.
I don’t believe a word of this fictional story. I was waiting for an important call from a service provider. I received a call from a survey. I participated in a very long survey. I remembered word for word that was said from the long survey and in a hurry wrote this article. I then waited three more hours and the important phone call I was waiting for never came. I didn’t get the I.D. of the caller because I was anticipating that important call.
LOL what hypocrites – only one playing dirty is sanders. Only one that has misrepresented endorsements is Sanders. Only one that has broken every campaign promise is Sanders. Only one that has bashed progressive organizations like Planned Parenthood and Human Rights Campaign is Sanders. Only one that is old white guy from lily white state (for 32 years), only one whose base is almost solidly white male is sanders. We are done with white male privilege meaning we dont get to elect the best person for president. No thanks. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2016/02/04/why-exactly-does-bernie-sanders-struggle-with-black-and-hispanic-voters-heres-why/
How old are you? Still waiting for the faire godmother? Time to grow up.
He was so nasty to this poor (probably literally) person! I am a Bernie supporter too, and despise Push Polling, but he was unnecessarily unkind to someone who was just trying to make a buck. If he had been gentle enough to actually try to talk with, instead of down to, the poller, I would applaud. But his behavior was purely egotistical and self-righteous. What a disappointment.
*Dalla
Do you work for the New York Times?
If bs is so great and positive why is he sending in bros and chickies pretending to be culinary union members to score votes with working people? Why is he claiming to have newspaper endorsements when he doesn’t? Why did he lie and say his son was the child of his ex wife? A push poll is honest compared to all that. And Nolan Dallas does sound awfully smug and superior for a socialist. Guess it’s for cool points.
I have a love/hate thing about polls. If I’m in a mellow mood, I just might participate, but the minute they start to run down a candidate, I cut them short, explain why I know what they said is untrue and then hang up. I have had a call already, here in Michigan about a candidate and I did tell the caller to get lost if they could not tell the truth. I won’t hesitate to hang up on them. It scares me with the number of people out there that don’t do the research to even know if the pollster’s are lying, let alone will change their opinion on a candidate from a phone call. My vote will be for Bernie Sanders! We need some honesty and sincerity in Washington.
You’re kind of a self-absorbed asshole. Not only was this poorly written, it also seems made up.
You’re like the dude who was picked on in grade school who went on to have an admired career as the poli sci major who was the most annoying person in class.
P.S. You’re also rude.
I’d like the audio please.
I found this article very disturbing even though I’m not surprised by the dirty tactics used in the Clinton campaign. Thank you for posting it.
I found it equally disturbing that some people responding to the article focused on minor issues with the grammar instead of the content. To me the questions in this sham survey are beyond misleading.
I have quit minimum wage jobs where I was asked to do something I thought was not right. It is insulting to the phone caller to assume that because s/he’s making minimum wage s/he is not intelligent enough to know that what s/he’s doing is wrong. This person is basically tricking the person who receives the phone call and lying to them about Bernie Sanders.
It was a great post. But many people may just share it on social media instead of commenting.
Why is it a good article when somebody is demeaning somebody just trying to do their job for probably really low pay. She didn’t write the script why crucify her? Making fun of someone’s accent or pronunciation? I would say this joker has stooped below push polling. .Looks just like some egotistical self gratification. I am disgusted.
Are we surprised at anything the clinton campaign does.(rhetorical)
This is the kind of thing that makes me worried for Bernie. I think this country needs him to be president. But his followers keep coming of as mean and elitist.
I don’t know this writer at all but it seems to me that you can’t have “Hillary Clinton’s” campaign in the title and then explain throughout the article the they didn’t really know who was doing the poll but it probably was hillarys campaign.. There were more maybes and possiblys here to perhaps not jump the gun and blame someone for something they may not have done.. After all, isn’t doing that just as bad as what the article is complaining about? Push-writing!
Push-writing! I love it!
Are you proud of yourself? As a retired interviewer for the Census Bureau, I can indeed tell you that you are an interviewer’s call from hell. And you’re also a pompous prick. Even if she was able to argue with you,she couldn’t have. That girl was doing her JOB. She couldn’t have argued with you, countered your arguments, made points, or have done anything else but ask questions as worded. Please don’t talk to me about Bernie running a positive, honest campaign. I started out liking Bernie, but now not so much. He has created a Hillary-hating monster that he has no control over, to paraphrase an article I just read. They are following their leader. I have lost respect for him, because despite what he and his tribe of online attack monkeys keep saying, he and his weasely, lying snake of a communications director Jeff Weaver, have waged a campaign of misinformation, innuendo, insinuation, and yes, “artful smears” to manipulate and deceive a huge group of the populace, most notably the millennials. All most of them can do is spout RW-authored, Koch-funded bullshit that the Republicans have been using to smear Hillary for 25 years. They are doing Karl’s and the KOCHS’ work for them. Their billion has been well spent. I say this often-if you cannot promote your candidate without trashing mine, you need a new candidate.
That was probably the most straight forward, intelligent and thought-provoking thing I have ever read on an online politics comment section. Maybe you should run.
No, indeed you’re not but your mouth could use a little freshening
Lots of obvious Hitlery supporters here. Get your collective heads out of the crack and think.
Good article, I will share on FB.
The name is DOLLA, sweetheart. NOLAN DOLLA.
Make a note of it. You’ll find it at the top of the article… in English… your native language.
Agreed!
bull shit, Bernie is smearing Clinton every chance he gets.threw advertisements and half truths about the bill she voted on for wall street reform. a bill Hillary stopped while her husband was in office with a veto. but the bill came back up after her husband was out of office that she could not block the second time so she added amendments to protect those who needed the most protection.What could have she done it was going to pass no matter what. so all she could do is make sure those who needed it the most was protected. so gets the facts out not half truths and bull shit. And quit saying Bernie isn’t running an attack and smear campaign because he most definitely is.
O.K.Mom.It is readily apparent that Bernie is an honest man and i agree with his views.Some veiled attempts to drive a wedge in there somewhere would not work with me.They would have to prove to me he was a baby raper or something, to change my vote, and would love to hear that one.If voters would use their brains and do their own research it is easy enough to DRAW THEIR OWN CONCLUSIONS.I someone receives a call like this one,and you don’t know the facts for yourself,then write down the particulars and google for yourself.That is if you care to know,but that is another can of worms. Michael, from Wa state
Hillary ran the SAME EXACT Push Poll in NH… I Got this same call… Did the same thing but not as aggressively… Had more fun with a Hillary supporter that came to my door that was totally clueless about banking and Hillaries and Bills connections and the repeal of Glass-Stegal…
Apart from supporting Sanders, not sure what was intended in this article. My wife and I are Republicans and we work the phones for Jeb in much the same way described in the article. From time to time we get rude respondents on the line but we are trained to hang up only if respondent swears or utters racist sentiments.
I disagree. I couldn’t get past the 1st question. This just seems so fake. Like she made up the whole thing. I give this article a thumbs down.
The only thing I disagree with here is the writer’s statement that the caller was a “disgrace to progressives.” The caller was just doing what progressives do—engage in dishonest tactics that are alienated from the concept of Truth. I also find it bizarre that the writer admits that Hillary Clinton’s political activity knows no moral or ethical bounds yet he maintains a high opinion of her. LOL!!
This is a lousy post. He is just trying to tell people how brilliant he is and fails. He is trying to argue with a person who is being paid to ask specific, scripted questions, regardless of how stupid or biased they are just so he can feel smug about his “superior” intellect. He is nothing but a bully.
That being said, I often lie to pollsters, which doesn’t hurt them, just the poll. The only time I have actually argued with them was when they refused to accept “Human” as my race because they didn’t have a check-off box for that.
Thank you very much. I too support Bernie. I do not trust H Clinton.
what makes you think it was from the cliton campaign you can not accussed anyone you are not God and the way that person was treated was wrong and by the way it could of been one of bernie sanders people he has been negative toward hilary so what has been said here is a bunch of crap.
http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/recording-suggests-hillary-clinton-backers-testing-attack-lines/story?id=37027124
Sharing all over with Everyone!
Campaigns often do polls to see what issues might affect people sometimes on themselves and sometimes on others. But if all the questions are negative about one candidate, it is most likely a push poll which is unethical conduct and no legitimate polling company (if such a thing exists) should be doing them. What you should have done is gotten their name and number to file a proper complaint. However, with that said, it isprobably not the Clinton campaign directly but some PAC, and they are doing this kind of stuff on both sides.
BTW, I have been bothered by his issue of Jane Sanders being a member of the Texas Low Level Radiation Disposal Compact Commission. This was a commission set up in Texas to regulate the dumping of nuclear waste from Vermont in remote areas of Texas. There was a fracas in the 90s because they wanted to dump it in an area called Sierra Blanca because, essentially, they didn’t think the mostly poor Hispanic residents would complain. For some reason I cannot figure out, Sanders was one of the leads on pushing the legislation through congress and he even battled Paul Wellstone over it. The residents wanted to have the right to sue the dump, and Wellstone amended the bill to allow them to do that, but Sanders refused to allow it. He basically took all those protections out. Strangely enough it was GW Bush who finally nixed the project and they had to find a new area over an aquifer.
So to manage the dump, they set up this commission and Jane Sanders is on it. I do not understand why. There is, of course, millions of dollars of Vermont taxes and rate payer money being spent on the project, so Vermont would need someone to oversee it, but why the Senator’s wife when she clearly does not seem to have any qualifications in the matter. Doesn’t it seem like a conflict of interest? Its like when she was appointed to run that Burlington College and she did such a bad job the students and faculty rose up against her. Was that a payoff for something else? Then you have the F-35s and Sandia labs. Seems like a lot of things are hidden there which they could ask about in polls like this.
I mean, chekc it out for yourselves and let me know what you think. Everyone tells me that Sanders would naver take a payoff, but there are lots of types of payoffs.
http://www.tllrwdcc.org/about-the-comission/
http://vermontrepublic.org/vermont-progressives-morph-into-prowar-party/
http://www.texastribune.org/2016/02/28/Sanders-Nuclear-Waste-Votes-Divide-Texas-Activists/
He ADMITS he has NO IDEA who called him, but he nonetheless ascribes it to the Clinton campaign. For all he knows the call was from a Republican.
Sorry, but he is a class A Douchebag, with a capital D
This article is mean and evil and full of lies
Frankly, I’m not the least bit surprised. Do remember how mad you were when “independent” PACs swiftboated John Kerry? Do you want someone who can fight fire with fire (unlike Kerry) or do believe in turning the other cheek as Sanders appears to?
Sanders is not about “turning the other cheek”. He has stood up to bullies since he was a child. He does, however, have integrity, and does not fight dirty.
Beth, well-said!
Well said, Beth. Seth appears to not hear himself very clearly. Or have a little more depth in thought.
yes he does play dirty and he does lie. http://www.newsweek.com/sanders-complaints-iowa-nevada-420806
and he is passive aggressive. and minorities dont trust him…
http://www.latinpost.com/articles/109083/20160115/presidential-election-poll-2016-hillary-clinton-has-strong-lead-among-black-latino-voters-sanders-winning-white-vote.htm
Carmen Zayas, the old short white guy is a 1000 times more trustworthy than that Clinton gang! Please join me in not allowing yourself to be bamboozled by the ‘Minority Champions’ the Clintons, any longer!! The prisons are more than overflowing with enough of us already!! STOP BELIEVING THEIR HYPE!!!
BS put out TV ads in Iowa and NH saying certain papers had endorsed him when they had, in fact, endorsed Hillary. Just YouTube it. It’s that “endorsed by” right above newspaper name. He will do whatever it takes to win. #getreal #indenial #Imwithher
During a brief security lapse due to a bug on the part of third-party campaign information data company NGP VAN, four staffers from the Bernie Sanders campaign had unauthorized access to limited data pertaining to the Hillary Clinton campaign.
Do you want a liar? That is not fire with fire, it’s smearing and being deceitful . And NO, I don’t want it either.
I prefer a candidate with integrity, like Sen. Sanders, thank you.
It would appear that Senator Sanders has the integrity to refrain from mudslinging, especially since Hillary’s history speaks volumes toward her leadership abilities. It’s past time the world to stop catering to the greed and falling for the mass distraction that is partisan kabuki theatre sponsored by tax write-offs of the elite class.
Well said Nolan. Hillary lost me when she trotted out her daughter to explain how Bernie was going to dismantle the affordable care act before he tried to implement universal health care. In free space that is amoral but when you continue to try and paint Bernie as the dirty campaigner it’s offensive.
Can’t you just phone the number back?
Way to be a dick to a lady telemarketer who probably has no idea she’s even working for Hillary. Have you ever worked in a call center? I have. You get new “campaigns” (sometimes to push products, but during election years it’s usually to push candidates) with scripts and lists of numbers. If you’re a grunt working the phone, you receiver little to no explanation as to what their purpose is or who is paying for them. Most people who work in call centers are uneducated and probably have never heard of a push poll.
The reason she has to keep citing what the script said is almost certainly that she has no interest in politics and you were being obtuse. Most employees are graded on their calls finished per hour, so she knew that she was losing out the longer she listened to you prattle on about how much smarter than you were than her.
If you didn’t like what she had to say, you could’ve just hung up and made things easier for everyone. Instead you had to harass and belittle a working woman at her own expense. It’s just how berniebros are wired, I guess.
Damage control for HRC eh? Sad era we live in these days.
Exactly.
There is no such thing as a “Bernie Bro.” That is a poorly disguised hit job news article designed to take Bernie out because he’s fighting for REAL change.
I was on twitter and a Hillary supporter decided to call me “stupid,” “silly,” and “an idiot” because I said Bernie Sanders is more electable. I never insulted her once — I also didn’t give in. And I told her, you can’t win a debate by insulting someone. You only resort to insulting someone when you know you are going to lose on the issues.
I’m sure she went around complaining about “Bernie Bros” after that, but if she did so, she became the monster she complained about. She couldn’t win on the issues, so instead she acted like an obnoxious prick.
I wanted to respectfully show her why Bernie was the better candidate, and she descended into personal attacks and lies just like Hillary Clinton has.
Not to mention, in several states Bernie is outperforming Hillary among women voters. That’s because most women are smart enough to vote for the candidate who will truly fight for them, than just hand the election to a female candidate for the sake of having a female President. As an example, Bernie supports 12 weeks of PAID maternity leave. Hillary has not supported that.
And then to see her on the debate accuse Bernie of an “artful smear” after he has been a total gentleman, refusing to capitalize on the e-mail issue, not calling her a liar on the spot for saying he wants to dismantle Obamacare (which is a total lie)!
Bernie fights for what’s right, in the right way. Hillary does whatever is politically convenient at the time. Yes, she is better than a Republican. Yes, I do believe she cares about the average American. But she uses dirty political tricks that remind me of Republicans.
How does he fight for what’s right? Exactly what bills and what did he do in Washington for 24 years as part of the establishment he keeps crying about. US taxpayers paid his salary for 24 years. He said he helped write the ACA, fact checks said not true, he ignored the VA problem as head of the committee for 8 years until he couldn’t ignore it any longer. Said he has not run a negative campaign, fact checks said not true. He wrote a 1972 article about rape fantasy. He honeymooned in Russia at the height of the cold war. I’d rather have a dog for President, at least I know they’ll be loyal. Young people know nothing, they haven’t lived long enough to have the experience. More than 50% of this country has already said they will not vote for a socialist. And one last thing…there is no SOCIALIST party in our government, and never will be. I deal in actual facts, just do some Google research. #Imwithher #nomorebern #feelthebernout
i was believing your comment until I got to ” Rape Fantasy.” Calling bullshit. Read that article, it is a wake-up call about how sexist tropes demean and define both genders- written by a male, in 1972.
if everything you say is this dishonest, Sanders doesn’t need to prove your side is full,of lies. you are doing it yourselves.
Since you asked, I’ll just leave these here:
http://www.alternet.org/election-2016/bernie-gets-it-done-sanders-record-pushing-through-major-reforms-will-surprise-you
https://votesmart.org/candidate/key-votes/27110/bernie-sanders#
P.S. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Democratic_socialist_parties_in_the_United_States
wrong, that is dumb. I’ve done telemarketing most of my life. You are who you represent. If your representation is unethical, then you are unethical.
Thank you, Ira. I was just going to go off a cliff over Dame’s comments. You saved me!
LOl thanks for that comment. I feel better since I think BernieBros are white male privileged cyberbullying non-progressive, feminist hating, sexists uninformed cult followers. So it stands to follow that BS is also.
problem solved! #StandwithHillary.
I agree with you dame d’l’aime. The writer did not have to be so ignorant to a telemarketer who is probably not even making a living wage.
Yep – I get the intent of this post, but the response to the woman on the other end of the call seems completely unwarranted.
There’s an old saying that goes, “Those who cooperate with evil become evil.” I think Nolan did this poor woman a favor–he’s saving her immortal soul by informing her that she is working for an immoral candidate. HRC uses dirty tactics to campaign because she is bankrupt morally, politically and intellectually. Who in their right mind would want to become associated with that sort of evil? (And I’m not a “Berniebro” since I’m female. Yes, middle-aged women support Bernie Sanders because he is an honest public servant, not someone like HRC who wants power so desperately she’ll push-poll, flip-flop or outright lie about taking millions from billionaires.)
That makes you a Berniebot then. Same thing…#Imwithher
Only a Clinton supporter would post this comment… You can’t even see what’s right in front of you. Low level grunt or not, this woman was building Clintons demogoguery in Nevada through claims that are not even remotely true. She deserved it, so maybe she won’t be able to spread this filth as effectively in the future.
She’s probably paid minimum wage trying to make ends meet and turns out she can get paid doing telemarketing. If you had to choose between not being able to feed your kids and calling people for Hillary, I’m pretty sure you would.
What??? That’s an insane thing to say. I’ve donated three times to Bernie’s campaign, and I’ve identified as a socialist since I was old enough to know what socialism is. I’m not a Hillary supporter.
STILL, even though I think most of this post is informative, and I like the fire in Mr. Dalla’s belly, he bullied the person on the other end of the phone. When dudes like you say “she deserved it,” you’re not striking a blow for democracy. You’re using the same s/he-who-yells-loudest-wins tactics as the people you’re railing against. You can make a strong point without bullying people. That’s kind of what Bernie’s entire campaign is about. Jeez.
“I was just following order.”
“I was just following orders.”
It’s not “s/he-who-yells-the-loudest-wins” tactics to rip someone to shreds for making a stupid statement, so long as you are staying on-topic and not conducting ad hominem attacks.
Clearly she was unprepared to have a political discussion, which makes it all the more cringe-worthy, but honestly if you’re willing to step into the political ring and use these underhanded tactics, I think at the least you deserve to be lambasted over the phone when you get someone who isn’t an unsuspecting victim.
He was clearly unprepared also. Because her claims were true. #indenial #nomorebern #hillaryismypresident
Right? He wasn’t nearly as concerned about the “exposé” as he was about beating up some poor woman who works in a call center.
Punching down isn’t very socialist, Dolan. As a Bernie supporter, I expect better of you.
I don’t. This is what Berniebots do. Young people have a hard time being civil, especially the Bernie supporters. All you have to do is look at the comments on all of the posts about the race. #getreal #Hillary
Exactly Jordan!
Don’t be an ass.
https://youtu.be/iQdDRrcAOjA?t=14s
these aren’t traditional phone rooms.. they are store front organizers with phones.
no. i disagree.
if no one takes a stand against these types of calls, they will continue. just hanging up says nothing.
her job requires her to interact with people on the phone. where is it written that we have to be submissive and agree or hold our tongue when we disagree with the way someone acts toward us on the phone?
have we lost the freedom to choose how we respond to a situation?
do we have to patronize this type of situation?
because i think that plays a big part in why politics in our country is so fucked up.
he was not being obtuse.
he was being honest.
frankly, i would be offended if i received a call like this.
“forgive this uneducated woman on the phone, she knows not what she says” bullshit just perpetuates an entire group of people who do not know what they are doing. and gives companies/politicians the idea they can continue this type of behavior.
this lack of critical thinking and reasoning – illuminated by the woman on the phone – is a direct result of the GOP on the war on education; the very thing Bernie Sanders is trying to end.
you missed the entire point of his post.
Exactly! We have to be proactive against this disingenuous crap.
Exactly. She is a traitor to her class.
I have also worked in call centers in my late teens/early 20s. You work for minimum wage and it is not a pleasant job. So nice that you straightened her out in such a respectful manner. Telemarketers and solicitors are unskilled laborers just trying to get the rent paid. I may not have time or wish to speak with them but I am never demeaning. It is unkind.
Thank you! I’m trying to prove this. Did your call center make political calls? I’m working on an article right now and could use some more quotes, if you’d be willing?
Clearly a Killary (Hillary) supporter
You act as if Hilliary Clinton is not a member of the democratic party with this all the silly name calling of yours. You sound like a republican.
The only candidate running on the Democratic side that us actually a Democrat is Hillary. #Imwithher
I work for a call center and I sell the shit out of my products. I don’t lie to people, but in all honesty people who are not as intelligent are more likely to buy. It’s that simple. That being said, what we’re finding here is that the script the rep is reading is misleading folks to come to a negative conclusion about Bernie Sanders. Lying and earning money for your lies is morally wrong and needs to be exposed in the media. Furthermore, pitting poor/uneducated people against each other to maintain the status quo is establishment politics at its worst. So, simply hanging up and expecting the problem to go away is a childish response. I would rather know what we’re dealing in regards to push polling while teaching the call center rep a little more about what they’re actually doing.
It’s unfair to make the telemarketer the bad guy here though. Yea, it sucks having to lie to people to earn a paycheck, but sometimes it’s the only job you can get and yea it’s hard to sleep at night while working this kind of job. But people pay these workers more than min wage for no experience, so a lot of people do it. Don’t shoot the messenger.
I was a telemarketer. I was pretty good at it. I even used to get mad about people who were rude to poor little old me. I was just doing my job, right? My job, calling people, attempting to mislead them into shitty products or services. I even worked for Comcast, and had the added excuse that I wasn’t calling them. I did mortgages and commodities for a few years, too.
This woman is not some innocent victim. Most of the time, I left the telemarketing rooms because I realized how shady the company was. Letting this woman know that she’s being used as a pawn to manipulate the political process is a favor. Letting her continue until she figures it out on her own? That’s not doing her any good.
I signed a few people up for ARMs and no doc loans. I took part in the bubble and the bursting, and quit because it seemed suspicious that my bosses never cared if the loan could ever get paid out.
You know what feels worse than getting yelled at by a stranger? Knowing that I screwed people out of lifelong homes for a few thousand dollars.
If this woman is a good person, she’ll want to know how wrong her job is so she can move on. And if she’s ok with shitting all over democracy, then I don’t think you can be rude enough to her.
While I agree with you (believe me I did this type of work for only a few weeks before I couldn’t bare it any longer), you have to educate not get angry. And regardless, my point is that these companies pay unskilled workers over min wage to do this job. Even if you disagree, most people need that money and can’t make it any other way. The best solution would to actually make this practice illegal.
I agree with you. It sounds like this woman had no idea what she was doing. It was the right thing to do to let her know she was misleading the public. She deserves to know that.
Working in call centers isn’t always pleasant. That’s a given. I’m sure she encountered much worse.
Holy fuck you’re sexist.
You know Lame Dame when you take a job you take the good with the bad. You don’t just get a babies laughter, you get the shitty diapers too. Rather than defend the paid shill you could have made a decent comment. Lame.
I guess she should care more about her life and the type of government she wants to have representing her. Be educated and stop being a pawn. I don’t feel sorry for anyone that doesn’t try
You are crazy ignorant. The woman may just be doing her job, but the Clinton campaign knows exactly what it is doing. And just because you assume that this woman conducting “polling” is undereducated and therefore couldn’t possibly know what she is even saying, that makes misleading citizens trying to make an informed decision OK? You can argue that the woman on the phone is the victim all you want, but in reality the voters getting fed this crap are the victims. This is exactly what is wrong with our political system, and you are either missing the point by a mile, or your comment is intended to further mislead voters trying to get good information. I guess what I’m trying to say is you’re a hack or an idiot.
Agreed. But get upset at the right people. It’s Clinton and groups that support her that are making this happen. If you support Sanders, you know that he is completely against the fact that people have to go work at these places just to make a “liveable” wage, and that getting angry with your fellow human being in the working class is not the answer. Get upset at the corporations, the big government.
When did Clinton ever say she was against working class people. Bernie supporters need to listen and read what you are writing. You sound just like the Republicans when it comes to Hilliary. Do you really think that is a good thing? Especially since they were the ones who started this campaign against Hilliary. You are falling right into the foolishness of all of this hateful bashing. I could very well ask the question…..What has some old ass white man ever done to help black people and latinos?
You are hate old people and white people?
No, Jackie, getting upset at anybody is not the answer. It should be about the facts. Nolan Dalla was trying to establish the facts rather than letting someone reading a script push lies which were designed to sway people’s opinions. THAT is the issue, not whether the author got hot under the collar or people’s assumptions about the telemarketer and how she felt.
From MY perspective, dame d’l’aime, he did a GREAT thing in keeping her on the line. He, thus, was able to prevent her from speaking with probably 4 or 5 gullible people who would’ve questioned their choice in Bernie.
dame d’l’aime: You know you might have had a chance at making a point until the end when you degraded the writer of this article. Berniebros is the term that Hillary trolls use to make others believe that those that are in support of Bernie are sexiest,hateful,ect…I am a woman and no where was there anything disrespectfully said to the caller. Hopefully she had learned something by having some of the facts pointed out and corrected. Let me guess dame d’l’aime you are a Hillary supporter or payed to troll articles like this to try to hush those that might be Bernie followers. Understand when a person learns the truth and then sees it, they never can go back to the ignorant rambling of the uninformed again. They only have one way to go and that is forward and to share the facts to the rest of the world that is wanting and willing to know and learn more.
While I understand your intent of being kind to call center workers, your harsh judgements about the writers supposed belittling was uncalled for imo.
I’d be similarly outraged to recieve a deceptive “poll” call designed to smear & trick the voting populace. And as a citizen I’d feel obliged to let the caller know how they’re being used as a tool of deception. Yes, unfortunately the caller probably needs this job, and may not have many other options. But being used as a cog in the machine isn’t a great place to be. Shedding light on one’s culpability can lead to positive outcomes.
No mud slinging is ever appropriate. Casting “BernieBro’s” in the light you did is just as shameful, and as uncalled for as what you accused the writer of doing. Tsk-tsk! Name calling and us-versus-them halts any meaningful dialogue and progress. The old ruse of divisions doesn’t serve anyone – seeking higher ground my friend;)
Alternatively, you might have been educating this push-poller. I’m not a “bro” (I’m a 55 year old woman and lifelong feminist), but I’ve had some conversations with political pollsters in which I’ve responded similarly — always politely, but explaining why the question is flawed and I can’t give them the multiple choice answer they’re asking for. Human beings doing telemarketing are also (potential) voters, and there’s nothing wrong with having a genuine conversation with them on the job. Plus, the more push-back these “pollsters” get, the trickier it is for them to implement these tactics. So as long as there’s no verbal abuse for the pollster/telemarketer personally, I say Way to Go!
I absolutely love this comment. Well said.
the actions were illegal.. it’s not surprising that hillbots don’t have a problem with it, look at their candidate.
I doubt a market research study for a political campaign is illegal. Nothing about what was described in this article indicates that a push-poll took place.
Exactly why telemarketers should be better regulated if not eliminated completely.
It’s sad that you see a gender issue here when they’re really isn’t one. There is no reason to believe that if the telemarketer was male that they would have been treated any differently. To me, that speaks to how shitty women are treated if you see this as a gender issue. It makes me sad that you see Bernie Sanders supporters as anti-feminist, because I know many wonderful feminists, both men and women, that have heavily invested in Sanders.
These are not “telemarketers”. They are hired by polling companies by the candidate and the DNC. They are not there just to take a job. They are there to work on the campaign. They are trained to do this shit. Especially in push polling.
Prove your accusation, please?
I work in an independent call center and we do a lot of this type of work. It’s not a push-poll and it’s not illegal. It’s message testing for a political campaign. The client is likely a PAC or PR firm, not a campaign or the DNC.
If it looks like a duck, if it acts like a duck…….Quack, quack. Or, inu the memorable words of Hillary Clinton, “arf! arf! arf!”
But…
*sigh*
That’s a platypus, Don.
At least she learned something.
Just because it is her job to harass people and LIE to them, doesn’t mean she doesn’t deserve the crap her lies earn. That she did it so badly as well shows the low quality personnel that call center employs. I’ve worked at SEVERAL call centers and the nature of the work isn’t so taxing that you cannot find a way to do it ethically.
That Clinton pushed this tactic onto a call center just shows how despicable she is. There is no excuse for this. Clinton is responsible for the acts done in her name. Unless she supports this, she needs to stand up and stop it.
Right on.
maybe that girl should have studied in school,,so she could get a job that she understands what the hell she is doing,,,maybe a dishwasher would suit her better,,,ya dummy
That’s very classist of you. I’m so happy for you that you were able to get an education (although I would say you probably need to go back and speak to your English teachers about this post). And fuck you for saying she should be a dishwasher. So if she’s uneducated she should wash your dishes, huh? Would you like someone to wipe your ass as well?
This. All of it. I’m a strong supporter of Bernie Sanders, and am disgusted by the push polling, but I’m also disgusted by the misogyny I’m seeing from some online and this post makes me dislike the author.
That is just an excuse for being thoughtless (in the strict meaning of the word!!)
Meanwhile, how Clintonbots are wired is nicely demonstrated in your reply, dame of love! You guys are just downright sleazy and instead of facing it, you try to wind around it and distract with your nonsense. This was a dirty Karl Rove–well, really David Brock, equally respulsive and dirty Tea Bag Koch promoter who once said of Hillary that she’s “a little nutty and a little slutty” and of course the guy who did the horrible assassination campaign of African American professor Anita Hill’s character when she had the courage to charge Clarence Thomas with a long history of sexual harassment. Yup, Hillary is a real gift to women, African Americans, and the United States. She’s so power hungry and money hungry that she’ll hire one of the dirtiest campaign managers–one who did a number on her, even–because she has no scruples, no morals. She’s an empty cipher and so too sadly are those who turn a blind eye to all the harm she has done over the years. (PS, to the author of this blog post: thanks for this good article: very helpful to know about this tactic. I know we are going to be seeing a lot of nasty stuff coming from the Clinton people, especially under Brock’s leadership, so it’s good to be informed.)
Was there ANYTHING in this post that really had to do with the gender of the “pollster”? Do you SERIOUSLY think the writer’s reaction would have been different had it been a male asking the questions? There’s plenty of misogyny left in the USA, but the attempt by Clinton partisans to impute such motivations to anyone who dares prefer Sanders does no credit to them or to her campaign. Yes, the pollster had a script from which she could not diverge. The post here wasn’t about her, it was about the motivations behind the script she was forced to read. HRC lost any chance of my primary vote in 2008 when her campaign’s attacks on Obama took the low road. I think she’s strong candidate faced with a challenge from a stronger one. Hanging up on this caller would certainly have “made it easier” on her, but wouldn’t have revealed what was going on. If you’ve ever gotten such a call, it’s extremely annoying to be asked questions that amount to “when did you stop beating your wife”, and to have no way to insist that you never did so in the first place. If I hear the term “bernie bros” one more time, I’m going to seriously consider voting Peace and Freedom or something if Clinton is nominated. It’s akin to calling people who planned to vote for Obama “homies”, i.e. degrading and meaningless. p.s. as I’m in CA, my vote for Clinton would be meaningless, in that this state will go Democratic regardless of who the nominee is, and the absurd electoral college thus makes my vote meaningless in this race.
I agree. It’s important for us to know about this but his treatment of that woman undermines my respect for him.
Oh please!!! When you find yourself sticking up for known Liars, it’s time to do a little soul searching. Bernie supporters don’t have to lie- we just get angry at the NEAR CONSTANT lies of others.
berniebros,.. right, and you could of just walked away from this forum without commenting by that logic. You also seem to be assuming much by your assertions of her job protocol as you prattle on.
Nice Try
You are not the only person here who has worked in a call center. Unlike you, I entertain no illusions about a callee owing a random, uninvited caller a damn thing. It sounds like you have found the work frustrating. One then suspects you weren’t exactly picked for any of the special promotion teams, were you?
Politics is clearly the writer’s passion. Nagging appears to be yours. Find work better suited to your abilities. Somewhere in this big, wonderful world, there must be a place for you where indulging in self-pity is considered a marketable trait in high demand.
Did you read the whole article? she Absolutely Knew she was “working” FOR Hillary! Just have to read the scripted questions she was required to ask to glean that! and Yes! $HilLary not only knows they’re doing it, she herself and Bill, have been guilty of way worse dirty politics than this……Cattle Gate? White Water real estate scandal? Travel Gate? Bill illegally put his unelected first lady wife in charge of their supposed “Health Care” Plan with such wheeling & dealing, that included giving contracts to friends, SHE was Fined $450,000! The whole fiasco cost the tax payers $32,000,000, that’s million, with an M. and there are many more. Including bribes/pay offs to secure her election to the New York Senate. Didn’t you think it was Odd that Obama gave her Sec. of State after all the rotten things she accused Him of during the campaign she ran against him?? The Monica thing was Bill’s 5/6th philandering mess to clean up and Hillary LIED for him on national TV! Juanita Broderick, Gennifer Flowers, Paula Jones, Elizabeth Ward Gracen. How Old are u? 15? Have you never heard of these women? and now you can add to the long list “Breach Gate”, where the DNC purposely left the Hillary Voter Lists “open” hoping a Bernie worker would “see”. On the Third try, in Dec. 2015, a Plant of the Debbie wasserman Schultz DNC, (since the first 2 attempts ended in Bernie workers reporting it right away and then reporting it to the DNC immediately) a relatively new guy to the Sanders campaign downloaded info. There was NO Breach/hack. Bernie even said in the Debate that followed a couple days later, that the DNC needed to “fix” their own “problems”. he was being nice. He could have said more because everyone knew what Wasserman-Shultz did. It’s one of several reasons why thousands of democrats have demanded she step down from being president of the Democratic National Committee.
So.. you’re not sure that it was the Clinton campaign; you’re just assuming that this was the Clinton campaign, and not an interest group aiming to push her. Right?
Enjoy the next few days. This fantasy socialist bullshit & bluster ends on Tuesday night, and then the real game is afoot.
whats happening Tuesday night?
You have no idea! Historical turnout for Bernie next Tuesday!
Swallowed your words yet? Wednesday was not a pretty day for Hillary.
The Bernie Sanders Reddit site found this and its being pushed up the ladder so it comes to everyone’s attention. Great article, real investigative journalism by random chance haha.
So.. you admit that you don’t know if this was the Clinton campaign.
Hmm.
Does it matter? The questions were obviously slanted Clinton.
It does matter. Typically the candidate’s campaigns do not do this push polling, but rather a group in favor of the candidate does.
And that’s the heart of the matter: Clinton has Super PACs and all the money in the world to hire hapless telemarketers to do her dirty work. Bernie refuses; his calls come from volunteers like me, and we wouldn’t be caught dead doing push-polling.
Well, It definitely wasn’t Bernie’s campaign. I work with his campaign and we do not use these tactics.
So you admit you couldn’t discern dog crap if you were standing in it.
Where are your blog posts about Bernie supporters pushing their candidate through dating applications and adult classified ads? Stay classy. Where was your outrage when the Sanders campaign knowingly accessed the Clinton campaign’s modeling data? You claim to be unbiased and then say things like, “Clinton’s aircraft hangar of political baggage as big as the United Airlines counter at O’Hare Airport.” Hundreds-of-thousands of loser conservatives have worked on the Hill too, but that doesn’t mean they have good ideas.
Those “ads” were PRO SANDERS and NOT ANTI-CLINTON. It’s just not the same.
call me crazy, but sanders and hillary’s supporters are free to say what they want where they want to are they not?
The fact that you think the two random girls doing that on Tinder is at all comparable is ridiculous. The fact that you are still accusing Sanders of “stealing data” is ignorant. There’s a reason the issue was dropped immediately. Because the DNC was bullshitting the entire thing, when the Sanders campaign made them aware of the problem in the first place, and fired the ONE staffer taking advantage, when we know that the Clinton campaign did the same thing much earlier with no repercussions.
Clinton has been nonstop lying about Sanders’ policies from the beginning while he has at WORST called her out on things that are totally true.
You mean the DNC breach that resulted in Clinton calling many Sanders supporters when she didn’t have those numbers or information? The same DNC breach that Sanders fired an intern over while the intern was in communication with the DNC the whole time? They alerted the DNC to the problem months in advance. Hillary is a sham, wake up.
I keep getting emails from various people in Hillarys campaign asking for me to support and donate. They have my name and email even though I haven’t supported her. I have sent emails asking to be removed but that doesn’t happen either. I had to actually ask to support Bernie before I received anything. There is something rotten in Denmark
Crock of shit story. So see through. Wasted my time reading this BS!!!
Please refrain from sending me ANY Hillary bashing slime from Bernie or any GOP followers. You all make me sick!!!!!
The so-called accessing Clinton campaign material was by a worker that the DNC pushed on the Sanders campaign. The campaign used the event to notify the DNC of a flaw in their firewall, and got penalized for it by having access to THEIR OWN data cut off. Just like Shillary, your post is full of lies.
I am not defending Hillary here but please be sure it was her operation. I was recently polled on a local primary coming up and the acted like they were from one of the primary candidates, but at some point it was clear that they were from a PAC,which appeared to be a Koch Brother funded ,based on Googling the calling number,through intimidation and lies. You might not have stuck around long enough for them to bash Hillary. My “pollster” did not know how to say deficit.
Exactly right. You have no evidence that this was from the Clinton campaign – you’re just guessing, and borderline slandering.
First of all, why do i have to scroll all the way to the bottom of the page to post a comment? This comment form, should be at the top of the page. It’s confusing, and it hurts your participation.
This is a good write up. Keep up the good work.
This information needs to get out to the voters of Nevada. I’ve heard of the same thing happening in Iowa. You’re right – many voters wouldn’t know how to refute this. How do we get the word out?
Or better yet – we can spread the word to Hillary voters that she’s doing this. Or we can get her campaign to acknowledge that it’s happening and say that they don’t agree with these tactics.
This is serious.
I interviewed for a supervisor position in a firm like this. They are separate non-affiliated companies that contract out to the highest bidders; a telemarketer of sorts.
At the time, their client was G.W…. I quickly backed out of the interview.
I was also polled a couple months ago, similar to the initial questions you mentioned. When it came time to state who my support was for, I was given a choice between Clinton and Bush.
I said, Bernie Sanders.
There was silence… followed by an agreeable laugh.
He asked again.
I still said Sanders.
He moved on to the next questions.
And this is the reason I do not accept any polling data from anyone. You can see polls showing Clinton leading, but all they asked the poll takers was whether they’d support her and not give you the other options.
This is clearly just a message testing poll, not a push poll. Push polls rely on volume which requires keeping them short. This is far too long. Push polls have to get tens of thousands of people to hear them. At this length, such a call would cost in the low millions.
No this is message testing. They are collecting the results so they know which mailers or TV ads to fund.
Not true. I worked for a push-poll company and some calls were less than 30 seconds, and others were up to 30 questions. It’s still a push-poll.
http://www.pollster.com/blogs/so_what_is_a_push_poll.html
“We can usually identify a true push poll by a few characteristics that serve as evidence of that intent. “Push pollsters” (and MP hates that term) aim to reach as many voters as possible, so they typically make tens or even hundreds of thousands of calls. Real surveys usually attempt to interview only a few hundred or perhaps a few thousand respondents (though not always). Push polls typically ask just a question or two, while real surveys are almost always much longer and typically conclude with demographic questions about the respondent (such as age, race, education, income). The information presented in a true push poll is usually false or highly distorted, but not always. A call made for the purposes of disseminating information under the guise of survey is still a fraud – and thus still a “push poll” – even if the facts of the “questions” are technically true or defensible.”
I got nearly the exact same call in Tennessee this past week. Same woman with an accent, only we have a primary, so I didn’t get to hear her say, “caucus.” I’m also a Bernie supporter and challenged those statements with vigor. I finally just told the woman my mind is made up: I’m voting for Bernie.
I really enjoyed your article, and I am horrified that this is happening.
That said, if you’re going to cite spelling errors as a reason for the NYT to be considered less reputable, and then go on to list your own extensive writing experience, you may want to proofread your own articles. There are about a dozen errors that I could find, and I wasn’t really even looking.
I think the point is that the NYT spends a lot, and takes in a lot, so they have the facilities to produce quality if they cared. But for sure they present themselves as the pinnacle of journalistic uberness (and have multiple editors, unlike this guy), so I dont think the comparison is totally fair. Do you write a lot? Have you ever had to proof a bunch of your own stuff? It sucks!
I don’t have the computer know-how do to this, but can someone that does please make something that tracks “push-polling” and get this knowledge out into social media?
A plea for perspective –
Eight years ago, I got angry with Clinton over the same tactics and it pushed me towards Obama. I kept thinking, “how could someone who has been on the receiving end of this garbage do it?”.
Unfortunately, no matter how much dirty politics happens intramurally, the sleaze ball tactics we’ll see in the fall, from the vast right-wing conspiracy, dwarf this push poll. It doesn’t matter whether the nominee is Clinton or Sanders. The Kochs, etc. will be shoveling the mud as fast as they can.
So either Sanders gets to see what it can be like and work out some response tactics that he’ll need later, or we nominate someone who has proved she will fight as dirty as the boys.
Either way, both of them would be ten times better than any of the viable R candidates. Don’t let yourself become so bitter that you hate the ten-times-better candidate because the eleven-times-better candidate wasn’t nominated.
Nolan Replies: Agree. Thanks for adding some perspective.
— ND
At last some perspective. This entire post was a type of Push Poll. First, it shows a picture of Hillary on the phone with two laughing staffers behind her. It is clear that Clinton DID NOT make this call. Second, It is NOT clear that her staff did or that Clinton paid for it. Innuendo! Third, it assumes that, if it happens in Nevada, it is happening other places.
I have received push-poll calls. Generally, the people on the other end of the phone ARE just minimum wage folks just following a script. That she was poor at it is beside the point. Dalla wanted to pursue it; wanted to prove it was Clinton behind it. If she was, shame on her; if she wasn’t, Shame on him for moving the conversation in a HATE Clinton direction which most of these comments demonstrate. Democrats MUST unify to prevent the array of crazies running in the R column from ruining our country. Get a grip on the reality we are facing.
First of all: You should always start the article via disclosing your biases instead of only disclosing your XYZ support after the text.
In addition, you seem like a bit of a dick to be honest. You treated a minimum wage worker like utter garbage. This person was just asking questions from a script, this is why I could never work as a telemarketer.
Hey, no one cares.
Nolan Replies:
This is a blog, not a news organization. The very notion of “NolanDalla.com” implies this is opinion. I didn’t have to disclose anything at all given my writings are all a matter of record (easily searchable). Still, I posted a disclosure at the end of the article for first-time readers.
As for being a “dick,” guilty as charged. I make no distinctions for workers doing dirty deeds, who are just “doing their job.” Hmmm, where have we heard that phrase before?
— ND
Mr. Dalla,
I am curious.
Are only Bernie Sanders supporters receiving these particular “push poll” calls. In all the responses I have read so far, not one Hillary Clinton supporter claimed to have received one.
If these are aimed only at Bernie’s supporters and donors, Just how did they gather this information? Phone numbers?
Sort of makes you wonder about the firewall “glitch” last December. Also the time that Bernie’s campaign did not have access to their own information, what happened? Hmmm….. Makes you wonder…..
@Kit – I felt a disturbance in the force via emailers from the DNC, and, bluntly, I do not trust them. Especially now, and certainly not before he gets the nomination.
I worked as a telemarketer during college (the only job that would fit my schedule). Both jobs I worked were for worthy organizations. Yeah sometimes people acted like sh*t. Sometimes people were patient and even nice. Sometimes people just hung up. The job sucked but if I had not been doing it for a worthy cause I would not have done it. That girl can get one of a ZILLION other telemarketer jobs. Companies of all kinds cannot hire enough telemarketers. She’s is far from trapped in this job. She is doing something unethical and I’m on Nolan’s side 100%. You don’t have to smile when someone’s trying to feed you a sh*t sandwich.
Because a person working for…someone (you are making a whole lot of assumptions) reads a script for any number of reasons, they are nazis and everything against the guy you like is a conspiracy or “shady.” You are why we don’t have a successful liberal movement in this country. The childish way you dealt with a person of no consequence and the condescending tone you take in describing this action online (They had no idea who they were talking to! *What kind of douche talks like that?) does nothing to further the cause. You turn people away. Your Nuremberg argument is, again, childish. You are exactly the kind of self-fellating ass that makes people think poorly of Bernie supporters. You are a net negative on society when you write things like this and embrace your pseudo bad-boy image as if you have half an idea of how government functions. You are the problem. Introduce yourself to reality or keep your mouth shut. Bernie 2016.
Thanks, Scott.
Exactly what I was thinking, but you say it so much better
You think that working in a minimum wage call-center and reading a script that tests political ad messaging is qualitatively equivalent to executing Jewish people during the Holocaust?
Maybe you should stop Godwin’ing your own arguments, you’re not 14 anymore.
Maybe you should stop with the PC outrage long enough to see that the slippery slope is indeed all on the same hill. There is no difference in the excuse at all; the fact that it is being used by some peon in a call center, and was used by the biggest military butchers of all time (and their clerks, and their shoe-shine boys, etc) is irrelevant to the veracity of the calling out of the logical fallacy.
I can’t say whether your story is true or not. What I can say is that I have been a Hillary volunteer for months now and have made hundreds of calls and have gone door to door. We are coached from the beginning to be positive and to NEVER try to undermine the competition. We are there to answer any questions people might have about Hillary and to urge people to vote. We explain the different ways to vote absentee and give the voters the knowledge of where their precinct is. Your experience seems to contradict everything we have tried to accomplish and the instructions we have received.
Nolan Replies:
Thanks for writing, Nina — and for your thoughtful post in the comments section. First, my story is true. Second, I am sure there are many fine people working for Sec. Clinton and I have no doubt most are honest, decent people. However, I stick by my initial convictions that were expressed, which were/are intended to raise questions (clearly successful on that front) and get some answers (hopefully from the Clinton campaign — if it’s not true, then make a statement).
I believe that you are likely a positive person who is doing some very admirable political and civic work — and I applaud that. Such was not the case with the caller who disguised herself as a “pollster.”
Again, my sincerest regards.
— Nolan
Yeah. This guy is an asshole. Also “that happened.”
Nolan – please let us know if and when they call you back.
Thanks for sharing. I will be linking your article in my own. I would like to point out two things that I will be going into more detail in my own piece: Push-polling is unfortunately not illegal, it’s bad campaigning yes, but not illegal; and second, the people making these calls do not work for a campaign but an independant firm and most of them do not agree with what they are doing but need the job and ironically are exactly the kinds of people Bernie is fighting for. As annoying as it is, getting upset at the person on the other side of the line is counterproductive. Note, they do have to tell you who is paying for the “poll” and they are the ones you should be upset with.
For those defending the “pollster” please remember she initiated the call and she can hang up at any time she wishes. It is liberty that allows such annoying calls and such responses. And I applaud that.
Socialism is pretty much incompatible with liberty which makes this post kind of funny.
Why is socialism incompatible with liberty, unless you equate liberty with the right to get rich off other people’s time and money? Socialism is essentially an economic system which, like capitalism, can be more or less democratic. I would argue that socialism can be far more democratic than capitalism because wealth is more equally distributed and economic control is in the hands of the majority.
Yes, I agree. Socialism is, indeed, more democratic. Everyone has little and all suffer. You don’t agree? Name a single country in history that has as high a standard of living as the U.S.A. Europe you say? Per capita gross domestic product is 80% of the United States and this is what determines standard of living.
Mixed economies with equivalent standards of living to the USA?
How about the USA, where poverty among the elderly was reduced 70% with the introduction of social security?
But take a look at Forbes’ list of the top ten countries for starting a business. You might be surprised.
Then why do they have a better standard of living in Europe than they do here.socialism is not incompatible with capitalism, it just attempts to make it moral.
They-Europe-don’t. Europe population is 500 million with a GDP of 22 trillion. USA pop. 315 million with a GDP of eighteen of trillion. Do the math. Then check it out on wikipedia.
What’s GDP got to do with standard of living? You can’t eat stocks.
Jonathan, GDP is the gross domestic product, not the price of stocks or food. Stock prices and GDP measure economic activity The lower the GDP, the lower the markets,the lower the income, the lower the food on your plate.
Actually, these telemarketers are not hired by the campaigns but private companies and will literally lose their job if they hang up. They cannot hang up. I know this because I hung up when I had had enough after a month a couple years ago and as they were about to fire me I told them I quit. I get that these calls are annoying and dishonest, but these people need jobs and these jobs require no experience or anything and sometimes this immoral job is the only thing that puts food on the table. I don’t disagree with anything the author said, but putting the anger on the telemarketer is misplaced.
As a fellow past telemarketer I feel your and the pollsters pain… however the bigger issue is who is behind the misrepresentation…. in star wars speak… the dark side?
And have to say caucus is a pretty mainstream word. .. esp right now so… yeah go through your script ahead of time. Put in the phonetic pronunciation as a side note.
I get you have to mislead… it’s in the script. . I have had to do it… when a customer asks “is it good quality? ” saying “no lady it’s crap” won’t keep you employed nor will it get you a selling bonus… and entrapment and sales… pretty much what telemarketing is about.
This article is right on the money. If the “pollster” on the other end was being harassed, well they themselves have harassed us on other things and at dinner time as well. You are a telemarketer and should know what it is like. These are the jobs that the Republicans let you have that pay nothing and subject you to all the crap.
As annoying as interrupting your dinner is, I’m sure you can understand why they call at the times they do. They want to reach the most people. Between 6pm and 9pm is the best chance that people are home. :/
A class action lawsuit should be pushed post haste.
The problem with the push-polling done by Rove is that the questions were based on totally fallacious and outrageous assertions – like Cindy McCain being a drug addict or McCain being a “Manchurian candidate.”
While you might disagree with the premises of the questions about Sanders, they are at least fairly conventional ways of spinning positions or actions he has actually taken. Like it or not, he has resisted gun control legislation and some legislation to make things easier for immigrants. They may be exaggerations, but they aren’t made up out of whole cloth.
While it may be misleading to hide the purpose of the call, it’s still just an effort at persuasion – and as long as the assertions are ones Clinton herself would make, I don’t see this as toxic or unethical.
Truly, Kirk? Polls are supposed to measure opinions, not to shape them through innuendo. I’d have no problem with these assertions, even when they are half truths, being put forth in a campaign call, but disguising them as polling is at the very least dishonest, and I’d call it unethical as well.
Says who? This is a pretty standard political technique and you’re going to find the Sanders campaign using it if his campaign has legs. Saying polls are “supposed to” measure opinions is like saying political ads are “supposed to” provide objective information.
Again, the problem with the Rove campaign was that the questions were slanderous. You can’t say that about these questions, as reasonable people might disagree about them. Because Sanders did take those positions on certain votes.
Say what you like about it, but push polling is considered underhanded. Push polling has been condemned by the American Association of Political Consultants[4] and the American Association for Public Opinion Research.[5]
Sanders doesn’t HAVE to stoop to those tactics if his campaign has legs. It does already without doing it.
For reference on the above
http://www.theaapc.org/about/pushpolling/
http://www.aapor.org/AAPOR_Statements_on_Push_Polls1.htm
So you admit the “pollster” was dishonest, but that’s okay as long as Hillary is dishonest in the same way?! Hillary is despicable because she cannot win by being honest. How about supporting the candidate who is actually honest? Dumbass.
Dumbass yourself. Push-polling is a political technique. Again, the questions asked are the same as assertions Clinton herself has publicly made. You may disagree with them, but they’re legitimate critiques. It’s only dishonest if the questions are actual falsehoods with no basis in reality, as the Rove polls were. Grow up and quit living in fantasy land.
Telemarketers know what comes with their job (the general dislike people have towards them). The author of this blog did a service to all to publish this information and to attempt to raise the consciousness of the caller. You may not agree with how he did but that is far less important than the main issue of deception at hand.
Would the same people defending what the telemarketer is doing defend someone calling Hillary supporters to see if their opinion would change if they found out Bill Clinton allegedly raped someone?
The caller isn’t giving a balanced perspective of each issue – the questions are deliberately asked in a particular way to achieve a specific goal.
The scruples of the caller are more or less irrelevant in the larger discussion of do we want the people that represent us to do this.
…wow….WOW!!..I’m seeing this attack on Sanders happening alot, but don’t kid yourself; Hillary is quickly becoming my “unfavorite” politician after 10 years of supporting her. There are also alot of posers out there saying they are Clinton Supporters on FB but they are not. One big one who has not one redeeming thing to say about Sanders is a guy named Grant Devereaux. Everyday this fool is gaining momentum. He says he worked for the 2012 Obama Biden ticket and I thought,”Really, I don’t think O and B would condone what you are doing. I went after him early this am. A Floridian hyperposts negatives on Sanders.
We were push polled by the Clinton Campaign in Iowa as well, which we found appalling. The “pollster” didn’t know how to react to getting called out on the transparently slanted questions & the call did not end well. I read somewhere that they are obligated to say who is paying for the “polling” when they call. Is this true? Because that never happened. But I *did* reverse look up the phone number and traced it back to a company with a heinous record for push polling that goes back for some time.
Thank you for the article. From England I was disgusted by John Kerry’s treatment by the swiftboaters. A war hero traduced by black propaganda.
We have dirty tricks here, too and they go pretty low. Check how they treat Jeremy Corbyn, another socialist.
Important point made above that a democrat, whoever wins, has to be better than a GOP surely?
Nonsense.
I really feel for telemarketers, the people manning the phones, selling kitchens one day and doing assinine political work the next. It’s very stressful and underpaid. Many call centers are in North Africa and Portugal. I am often tempted to let into them but most often just hang up abruptly. There is no good solution to this problem. But this was a great article I’ve tweeted out several times.
So, to conclude: possibly not a push poll from a completely unknown entity and unknown human person you gleefully insulted. I think you should look up the word “assume” on wikipedia and think about a rewrite.
They best not call me. I will end the conversation immediately by saying, “There is no lie you can tell me that will change my mind about Bernie Sanders. This country has been waiting a long time for an honest man with integrity and so before this conversation goes any further, I’ll let you know right out the gate – I’m voting for Bernie Sanders.”
Now I will know how to handle a push poll call, thanks.
I got that same call in NH. Same frigging thing.
Just went to hear Bernie speak in NH. Came out to a negative ad flyer on my windshield bashing his record. Of course it “Paid for by Hillary 2016.” Disgusting.
I hope you kept it. Copy it and spread it around as a meme on political discussion boards, wherever this subject is being discussed. I’m sure it will be in the air for quite a while.
Wow, you actually linked to a definition of push polling that makes clear that what you received was not a push poll. Well done for the link, not so well done on reading comprehension. This is a message testing poll, which basically all campaigns do. Yeah, it’s about finding out an opponent’s weaknesses and maybe you think that’s illegitimate, but a push poll it ain’t.
A push poll wouldn’t come this far ahead of time, it wouldn’t bother asking you demographic information, and it wouldn’t last as long as you describe. It would be purely about making sure you heard negative information, not about collecting information as this poll was obviously designed to do.
But I guess if you couldn’t call it a push poll the OUTRAGE factor wouldn’t be quite as high, huh?
Are you literally a cuckold? Kill yourself Nolan
So you really trashed that single mother working at an independent polling contractor.
Maybe even made her cry. Who knows.
Did you get a fat chub when you used your tough – guy mean voice on her?
Sorry… as a single mom who has worked at a call center… I doubt he got a “chub” from the call. ..I would want to know that I was misleading people into the downfall of the u.s.
And ..btw.. if after u take your viagra this comment give u a “chub”… enjoy yourself…sit on your hand and you can pretend you are not the only person with an interest in you.
Rob, what about this conversation implies she was a single mother? That’s classist and sexist and you also suck at trolling.
Rob Johnson please post where the article sad she was a single mother because i read the article and nowhere did her marital or parenting status get mentioned. Unless of course you are talking from your own guilt and passing it along to the author
This is horseshit disguised as unbiased rose petals!!!
American people are finally starting to wake up to the atrocities committed by the very people they think they are electing??? A quote that resonates with me is”if voting really mattered they wouldn’t let us do it” Everyone has dirt in their past period!! But people can change I realize that but for someone like hillary who’s about 2 steps away from prison to even be running is a slap in the face of America. I will never make it past Bengazi atrocities…..She is dead to me in any political form.prison stripes yes!!
Just my opinion…..
Yeah, I’m not sure what the big deal is. You were asked substantive questions about the Senator’s record and a freely available New York Times Editorial. Now if you were asked “Would you be more or less likely to vote for Sanders if you knew he enjoyed torturing puppies?” Then that would be ‘push-polling’.
“What makes this so reprehensible is that many voters will not be able to discern truth from fiction.”
First of all I think there are many other aspects of this story that make it much more reprehensible.
Secondly, Sir, do you have such little respect for your voting peers and the “Hispanic community” in Nevada that you think they cannot spot a ruse as well as you?
Have faith, have respect for your fellow Nevadans and believe they are as smart and capable as you from discerning truth from fraud. Until we view our neighbors, especially our immigrant community, as equally capable and intelligent members of our society there will be no progress.
thanks for this I knew it was happening but I had not gotten the call yet. This guy that got the call was brilliant. I loved the couscous mistake. The basis for the call is wrong and push polling should be if not all ready illegal. Yea it’s illegal right? The people working and making these calls are paid I mean they get something to put in their wallet or why do it?
This kind of site is really a game changer and I am thrilled it is doing this no matter what people say.
Did you happen to record the call?
Nolan Replies:
No. I started taking notes when at one point when questioning started. Wish I had recorded he entire thing, including the five questions I left out (of the write up) because I could not make out the scribbling afterward.
— ND
You did the right thing Nolan, don’t let these morons tell you otherwise. The person who called you was doing a DEEP disservice to democracy, and,as a woman, I would’ve totally told them off as well. I can’t believe push-polling isn’t illegal. I wonder if it used to be, before we became an oligarchy.
I think you did the right thing. I got one of these phone calls also. Whenever people call my home in hopes of getting my personal information and influencing my decisions I like to get as much information from them as possible and influence their decisions.
Most of these post are outraged at the response that was given to the person doing the telemarketing or push call. So much that you have missed the point about the devious tactics being used to frame and misrepresent one of the Deomcratic contenders. And this is the kind of crude that that the establishment media and the DNC wants. They want you to pick up pitchforks over minute details and lose the big picture so they can continue to be dishonest. Not agreeing or disagreeing with how the conversation went, you may handle it different, even ‘ better’ but don’t squabble with each other while you are being screwed.
Nolan – I am doing phone banking for Bernie from SF. Is there anything else we can do to fight back push polling? Any further information would help us Berners.
Nolan… you know you could have actually exposed her had you not become so aggressive. I mean it could have been so damn easy had you just kept your cool and been nice to the person. Dang it Nolan! But a dang good post anyway
Wow, hugely valuable piece of information here. Thanks for writing this up! It does not surprise me at all that her campaign is resorting to this, she basically has nothing when it comes to integrity or her own record as compared to Bernie. This is some valuable insight that I will be sharing with many of the “older” people I know, who still think that Hillary is worth their vote. She will not change anything. She still represents the status quo and that just isn’t good enough anymore.
I would urge you to support Senator Bernie Sanders in the democratic primaries. I am a long time democrat but have been very disappointed that the party establishment seems to be promoting Hillary over Bernie. Bernie’s proposals and policies are in line with democratic values and should be considered carefully by all voters. I don’t dislike Hilary but I think Bernie Sanders would be far better for the country. His policies have been consistent. He does not change according to polls and he will continue to fight hard for what benefits the American people as he has done for over thirty years. He is not beholden to powerful corporations or individuals. His speeches generate much larger numbers of people and enthusiasm than any other candidate from either side. He has the ability to unite and is creating a revolution in the political system that can transform the country into one that serves the people rather than serving large corporations or the super rich. Bernie Sanders is an honorable, compassionate, decent, intelligent man of integrity! A rare commodity among politicians! The American people would be very fortunate to have him as President!
Oh no! Sounds like you missed a *very important* phone call from your service repairman that Friday night :-/
Terrific Stuff!
Push polling is among the dirtiest, nastiest tricks. We can’t let this go by. Clinton can’t win the contest with this kind of nasty business.
I’m just glad they made the mistake of polling Nolan.
Some group in Illinois is doing pro-Bernie push polls. It’s all automated, no human involved. I’ve gotten it twice in the space of a week.
I’m a pollster. I also worked for many years in political communications. A) push polling is not a polling methodology; its a communications tactic and B) what you described sounds nothing like a push poll. Push polls are typically VERY short usually 60 seconds to two mins tops. Often, but not always, they are recorded or use instant voice recognition technology. That’s because as a communications tool, they want to try to reach as many people as possible for as little money as possible. They aren’t interested in all your demographics or spending 15 mins on the phone with you because they aren’t doing research and as a communications approach it would not only be insanely expensive but also very ineffective as most people they reach won’t hang around that long. This sounds like a genuine research call. It could have been conducted on behalf of Hillary–perhaps by her campaign but also possibly by organizations and interest groups supporting her. It’s also possible it was conducted by someone on behalf of Bernie Sanders. It’s common in political polling to test negative messages against your opponent to see what sticks and also sometimes against yourself or your candidate to understand what your weaknesses are and with whom. The inclusion of negative messages doesn’t make it a push poll–generally that’s just good political polling–nor does it make it a dirty campaign tactic. In making these assumptions and writing about them publicly you are spreading mistrust and misinformation that has absolutely no basis in fact. It’s reckless and irresponsible. There’s plenty to debate in this race if we stick to the facts.
You did the right thing Nolan, don’t let these morons tell you otherwise. The person who called you was doing a DEEP disservice to democracy, and,as a woman, I would’ve totally told them off as well. I can’t believe push-polling isn’t illegal. I wonder if it used to be, before we became an oligarchy. Hillary supporters need to stop lying to themselves and others. I used to like her as a backup candidate, but she’s not even acceptable anymore. Bernie is our only hope, and the ONLY honest candidate.
100% right. Sounds more like a message testing poll to me and ALL campaigns that poll do message testing b
This would be substantially more meaningful to me if it didn’t jump to conclusions about who was behind the push poll. No doubt this is an underhanded tactic and no doubt it is against Sanders. But it’s unfair and irresponsible to lay it at the feet of Clinton’s campaign as a matter of certainty.
Are you feeling proud of yourself for behaving so rudely to and then talking smack online about a person who is probably probably making minimum wage working for a research firm and is likely not a volunteer with the Clinton campaign? Nice example of how lovely a socialist can be. Nice optimism there. I’m sure Senator Sanders would be thrilled with your behavior in his name.
– thank you for sharing the story, I’m not surprised.
Hillary puts her own ambition ahead of every progressive cause she says she stands for.
…I will never vote for her, ever.
– Progressive take note : though I care for the plurality of our causes, I cannot in good conscience vote to make her commander in chief, and I will not.
…she will lose if nominated.
It all rides on this primary, I have seen this same sentiment all over the internet.
– Bernie or Bust! 2016
Good article. I can understand how the writer got agitated by the telemarketer. I’d be pissed too and probably feel that giving her hell would represent my only means of taking back my power in the situation. I bet if everyone were to give the push pollsters that much crap the shady practice would stop. She represents a big part of what is wrong with the country. All the same she is just a mindless, nameless player in a goddam call center. I’d probably be a little nicer with the shit I throw since I’ve had one of those crappy jobs and still feel dirty about it afterward. Damned if I do, but I’ll do it anyway and know I’m fighting the good fight.
OP, are you going to refute those questions? Those people that have been reached are mosikely going to hit the internet to verify them.
As a foreigner following your elections, i hope for you guys Bernie Sanders makes it to the White House! Universal health care for everyone and someone who’s a true spokesman for the true working class.
It appears you’re a bit of a big, insecure ass-h*le, who needs some writing lessons at the very least.
I am behind Bernie 200%! If you have a connection to him at all please tell him this for me, ” He has got to explain what social services we already have, go down the laundry list! Explain it like he is talking to one of his grandchildren. That way anyone with a brain will know what he means by calling himself a Democratic Socialist! Then bring out the heavy artillery and let us ALL have it, right between the eyes!” Bernie is awesome and I love him to death. But he has GOT to explain what we have as a country with social services already!!! Hopefully you can get my concern to him. FYI…tell him to tone it down when he begins to explain social services so people don’t initially feel he is overly excited. Then once he goes into what he wants to share with the folk, roar like a lion. But a lion that is emotionally under control! TRUST ME, people WILL get more on fire. Hopefully that will help with these (cheating calls apparatus. Thank you for reading my rant! Glenda
Great article. I’d like to correct some misunderstandings,though. More than likely you were not talking to someone “working for Hillary.” I used to be one of those annoying people who called and asked you to take a survey. Trust me. That caller didn’t give a diddly d*mn about Hillary or Bernie or maybe even the election.
That caller was getting paid somewhere between $8 and $9.50 and hour. Her hours were limited to 29 a week so her employer didn’t have to give him any benefits. She probably works for a company that was hired by the Clinton campaign.
The company my husband and I worked for did surveys for lots of politicians at local, state, and national levels. We also did them for soft drink companies, cable providers, banks, unions, and any other group that wanted information.
The caller MUST read the questions verbatim, with no extra words, comments or explanations. At any time her supervisor could be listening in and if she deviates AT ALL, she will get a warning, and the next time she will lose her job. (Crappy as the job is, at least it is a job.) If the person being interviewed hangs up part way through, none of the survey counts and the caller’s completion rate goes down. Again, she could lose her job.
The caller has absolutely nothing to do with the way the questions are worded, can’t agree or disagree with you, and can only read the choices given. She may work on two or three different projects during any shift. An hour later she could have been calling someone in Georgia on the topic of which network has the best professional football coverage.
Believe me when I tell you I hated that job. Some of the surveys were fun. But the political ones, unfortunately, were almost always slanted and I took a great deal of abuse from some of the people I called. But it paid the rent.
Most of the time we didn’t know who was sponsoring the survey because it might affect the way we read the questions (tone of voice, etc.) Sometimes we could figure it out based on the codes at the top of the sheets of phone numbers. Occasionally we knew and could tell the person being interviewed, but only if they asked, and only at the end of the survey. A couple of times, telling them up front was part of the script.
I learned, as time went on, what many of these political surveys were used for. Believe it or not, it was not to sway your opinion, although that is certainly a possible result. Candidates would do the surveys to decide which “arguments” were most compelling, and then incorporate them into their ad campaign. Two or three weeks later we would be doing the identical survey again (after the ad campaign had run) to determine its effectiveness.
Arguing with the caller or explaining your own position has absolutely no impact. We didn’t like the questions any better than you did. I even brought it up to my supervisor but there is nothing anyone at our level can do about it. Our company is based in Washington and has offices in several states. The people at corporate who designed the surveys really didn’t care what we thought. This is the way it’s done. If you don’t like it, there are several people waiting in line to get your job.
Before I became an interviewer, I used to respond like you did when I would get these survey calls. I argued, gave tho other point of view, etc. Once I was on the job I realized the only thing that mattered was clicking on the multiple choice answer. I hated getting respondents like you (and the old me) because it took so long to complete the survey. Then along comes my supervisor. “Why did this survey take you 32 minutes It should only be 20 minutes?” That, too, could cost me my job. Now when I get those calls, if I choose to do the survey, I just give my answers and let them get on with their job. Let me repeat, IT IS NOT THE INTERVIEWER”S FAULT AND THERE IS ABSOLUTELY NOTHING SHE CAN DO TO CHANGE THE QUESTIONS.
I hope this helped shed a little light on how this polling stuff works.
Nolan Replies:
It did. Thank you for taking the time to explain. Obviously, the interviewer is not my intended target but ended up as the firewall of my disgust. Again, your explanation was read thoroughly, and noted.
— Nolan
Then retract those parts of your piece.
Well-said, and explained. I used to work for a survey call center in Kansas. I was good at it, but it was miserable!
Glenda, thank you! You explained it much better than I did. I don’t think people realize a lot of the interviewers are just HS kids as well.
There’s zero chance this happened the way you’re describing it, if it happened at all.
The part that really rings false is the . You think these people are working off paper? The questions are on a screen and she’s putting the answers into a computer. None of these campaigns are printing out shit for people to read. Ridiculous.
Not true, actually. Some of them do give you papers, they’re just not for the survey, they’re for rebuttals, for when people aren’t giving you answers you can put into the system, or when they’re giving you excuses as to why they can’t do the survey right now. In this instance, likely the former.
Not sure why this guy felt the need to get into a debate with a caller who was saying numbers (“Bernie Sanders’ campaign promises would cost more than $20 trillion and would raise everyone’s taxes”) that have been reported in the media. No one at Clinton’s campaign made them up.
Also not sure why he wasted our time with a transcript and analysis of the conversation.
When I saw the lead – “Nolan Dalla gets ‘push polled’, but they have no idea who they’re fucking with” -, I thought he was talking about something sleazy like what Karl Rove pulled in 2000 in South Carolina:
“Rove invented a uniquely injurious fiction for his operatives to circulate via a phony poll. Voters were asked, ‘Would you be more or less likely to vote for John McCain…if you knew he had fathered an illegitimate black child?’ This was no random slur. McCain was at the time campaigning with his dark-skinned daughter, Bridget, adopted from Bangladesh.”
http://www.thenation.com/article/dirty-tricks-south-carolina-and-john-mccain/
There was nothing so nefarious.
This is campaigning, where candidates compete and make contrasts for the voters.
My only question is why the caller didn’t end the call as soon as it was clear that he or she had reached someone who’s hostile to the message.
It was misleading because Bernie’s plans would actually make the middle class FAR better off, but the”question”implies otherwise. When you find yourself sticking up for LIARS, time to do some soul-searching.
It’s not something that the Clinton campaign made up.
It’s not like what Karl Rove did in South Carolina in 2000, a fine example of lie and sleaze.
It’s a view that you don’t agree with. That doesn’t make it a lie. The Republican Attack Machine has so screwed up political discourse in the last 25 years that we all now scream “LIAR” and hate political opponents.
I get that many are stoked for Bernie. If he had the slightest chance of winning a general election and/or actually getting done even half of what he’s promising, I’d be enthusiastic about him too.
You might not like it, but Hillary is the better candidate and can get what she’s promising done.
What Bernie’s supporters have in common isn’t their youth; it’s their inexperience with the political process (Nolan Dalla being the exception, which seems odd given what he says about his experience).
“that have been reported in the media.”
Well that settles it doesn’t it. The WSJ reports the cost of single payer without mentioning that no one would have to pay insurance premiums anymore, or that other countries with single payer pay far less than we do as a percentage of GDP
This is an important post because it speaks to a very important issue. First, it is just my own personal belief these type of lowlife tactics being used (by both sides and I’ll get to that later) is an insult not just to the people on the receiving end, but to our country as a whole.
It was just today that I decided “not” to support the Sanders campaign. 98% of what Senator Sanders stands for, so do I. the tactics though used by some Sanders supporters made my mind up for me though not to support him.
It started in early November with a little op-ed piece in the Huffingtonpost written by a Sanders supporter stating why he would be supporting Bernie and no matter what happens, he would never vote for Hillary in the general election even if she were the nominee. Comparing a vote for Hillary to a vote for Donald Trump. I didn’t pay much attention to this at the time. But then I started to see this proclamation by this writer not just become a mantra for many Sanders supporters but also being used a tool to threaten and blackmail undecided Democrat voters like myself. And it just wasn’t me who noticed this. Strong Sanders supporters have also acknowledge this. Then I actually started to read post on my Facebook page from people whom I have known for a long time and who support Sanders actually using this tactic. “You better support Sanders in the primaries if you want a Democrat in the White House because many of us supporters will either not vote or vote 3rd party if Hillary wins costing the Democrats the general election. I messaged Shannon Kern who had posted such one message and whom I have known and had much in common with helping the poor and homeless, why are Sanders supporters using such tactics, threats and actually blackmail on fellow progressives, liberals, Democrats…etc. First she said it was just a strategy which Sander supporters are using and then even went on to claim they would rather see a Donald Trump in office as oppose to Hillary,if Bernie wasn’t nominated because additional suffering of innocent people would just bring them and their political agenda more support.
I was so angry and upset. How is it that Democrat Socialist or Socialist in general would think and believe it is alright to adopt basic Donald Trump tactics using the suffering of our less fortunate and the promoting of such to gain personal and political goals as anything but disgusting and inhumane. This is Teaparty stuff just on the opposite side of the political spectrum. That was when I knew that our country is just not social mature enough to have someone like Bernie Sanders lead it.
Some people may think this upcoming election is just about the next four years but that isn’t even close to the truth. One Supreme Court Justice maybe even two will be at stake. And even one more Conservative Judge on the Court will shut out progressive movement for the next 30 years. This is not about four years. It’s about a generation.
In the end I will keep what money I give during the Presidential elections. Neither Sanders nor Hillary will see a dime. I will support the Democrat nominee. I will do so because I don’t really have the luxury of turning my back on people I care about for my own personal or political gain. Be that my parents living on S.S. and Medicare, the homeless and their housing needs or the poor and a living wage. Any revolution using innocent people as shields has no moral ground to stand on. (I have documented everything I state here about this happening)
James Waghorne, I respect your right to vote your conscience, but I thought you should know that as a longtime Bernie supporter, I have not seen such attempts at coercion from other Bernie supporters, and certainly have not received any such instruction to do so from the campaign. There may well be people who are attempting that–just as I have frequently seen Hillary supporters employing essentially the same argument, that voting for her is the only way to ensure Republicans don’t get the White House–but the general election is a long time away, and people will have plenty of time for soul searching before then. I hope in the meantime we can all take the opportunity to vote as we truly want in the primaries, and trust that each of us will give our best to see a brighter future come November.
As I stated, I have the documentation to prove what I have stated and have also heard from others who have replied to this post who are Bernie supporters as factual. This so called “Bernieorbust” campaign puts America as Secondary and peoples own political and personal agenda first the same way TeaParty members do. I know that’s not what Bernie is all about but he needs to get this handled. It is not a small group of people doing this.
Um, the reason some of us are going #BernieOrBust is that he’s the ONLY candidate who is actually standing up for democracy.Hillary is much more like an oligarchy and a republican. Bernie is our only hope. & if he doesn’t win, I’m moving away.
So Gina, In other words, this is all about you and what you want and America is secondary and all the other people striving to make it a better place. In your own words you have proven your just like the TeaParty but on the other side of the political spectrum. Just because you can’t have socialism microwaved doesn’t mean you can’t have it baked. This idea the Bernie will be the last Socialist to come around doesn’t put much faith into the movement that can only find one single standard bearer.
I believe I received one of these calls yesterday, I am in Texas – so I cannot be sure. Went through the usual will you be participating in the up coming Primary? Ans: 100% plan to vote. Asked if I was voting in Rep or Dem – told them I was 100% voting for Bernie – (guess I didn’t give her a chance to progress through the questioning – as a very flustered voice then said “you do? well thanks for your time.”
I can only hope it was a $hillary polling operation – if not, then Bernie will be happy.
I used to work for a third-party polling company. It sounds like Mr. Dolla was contacted by one of these, and not a first-party pollster, based on her inability to read the script correctly. Mispronunciation among my co-workers there was rampant. The contractors are incredibly insulated; the pollsters have no training beyond what’s on the script (I wasn’t even allowed to verbally change the script when the written script used improper grammar!).
You should have changed it anyway, if they were asking you to lie.
You know, with all the problems we have here in Brazil, such a thing could never happen here. We have a special branch of the Justice called the Justiça Eleitoral (Electoral Justice) that would repeal the candidacy of any politician doing what Hillary does. This includes push polling and also frauds in the Iowa caucus. For a country that boasts about being the greatest democracy, the USA has a lot to learn with other countries…
Mr Dalla,
I find you rude and an insufferable know it all. Said that you wrote this in the heat of the moment and I have to say it shows, you come off as a total hot head.
I’m voting for the candidate who can win.
#Hilary2016
Regardless of the phone service, Hillary Clinton is still the best qualified candidate that either party has to offer this country. I am totally behind her for the primary and in November.
#Imwithher
#HillYes
#bernedout
#BSisBS
I’m voting for the candidate who can win too.
#Bernie2016
Scott,
Isn’t that a self-fulfilling prophecy? Whichever candidate we vote for will win, yet you say that like it’s a rallying cry. Myself, I’m voting for the candidate who best represents my ideals and exhibits tremendous integrity, which I find much more compelling reasons. I’m thrilled to have the opportunity to vote for someone who isn’t merely the best of the available field, but the person whom I believe best for the country. I wish democracy would always be like this.
One of the biggest falsehoods in this election is that Bernie cannot win. If all the people that assumed Bernie couldn’t win so they may as well vote for Hillary followed the real information more closely instead of buying into all the media garbage they’d realize that Bernie is ahead, he’s been ahead and he can win. Hillary Clinton has a horrible track record and is not what the USA needs at this juncture in history. Don’t vote for Hillary just because you assume Bernie can’t win – if you believe in what Bernie is saying – vote for him and watch him win.
You keep saying how you could destroy their arguments but never do explain. Exactly how is the Bern going to pay for all this free stuff?
I read this article yesterday and was kinda pissed off. Today I open a MSNBC article about Cruz and watched this Maddow video http://www.huffingtonpost.com/michelangelo-signorile/post_10496_b_8544540.html
First thing I thought of was the phone call Mr. Dalla received. I think this may give us an idea of where the call originated from
I received a push poll call as well, but mine was more abbreviated. It focused on a single excruciatingly long paragraph describing Sanders’ economic plans in apocalyptic terms. I explained that that reinforced my view and that Clinton cannot expect my vote under any conditions.
100% this is the work of a market research company.That is why the caller couldn’t deviate from the script or your call would be void.Either Precision Opinion on Convention Center Dr or IHR on Maryland Pky.I used to work for
them b4 poker.
That’s it exactly, this wasn’t a staffer or a volunteer, it was likely some mid thirties lady trying to pay her rent as a minimum wage market researcher. I used to work for Venture Data and Call Research we did polls like this every election year in every state.
This survey is so familiar. I would bet if he had made it past this section the next section would have been quotes bashing Hillary and asking if they made him more or less likely to vote for her.
no need to take it out on the waitstaff.
First time here. Very interesting. I appreciate the disclosure by ND at the end of the article. I see a lot of back and forth about how the author is abusive to the poor telemarketer. The way it was described, it didn’t sound abusive. It sounded frustrating and irritating. Why don’t employees know something about the questions they are asking? Why don’t they know something about the issues they are asking about? They should be required to know these things before they are hired. What is their background? Are they qualified to be a telemarketer or a pollster? What education do they have. If I work as a food handler at McDonald’s I still have to know what the hell I’m doing. If I don’t a lot of people are going to get sick.
The issue here seems to be who paid for this poll or survey or whatever people want to call it? That determines which questions were asked and what statements to make to difficult callers, and most importantly, which employees to hire! I do not believe for a second that the caller is innocent. I know that traditional campaigns buy loyalty by giving these kinds of jobs to sons and daughters of friends of the campaign. There has to be a money trail somewhere. Find out who paid for this trickery and the truth will out. As for N.D. a very fine blog. Keep writing.
So, do you yell at the employees at Burger King too, or maybe the checker at the grocery store, about the quality of the food? This is pathetic. Push polling is distasteful, but your treatment of the caller was far worse, and you bragged about it. Do you think anyone gives a shit how many times you’ve been quoted? Besides yourself, I mean. Your self- righteous treatment of an stranger doing their job is contemptible. You make Sanders supporters look bad and you should be ashamed.
Is Nolan Dalla your real name? I can’t believe you would post something that shows yourself in such a poor light. If you don’t want to be questioned by a pollster, just hang up. Instead you stayed on the line to berate them, maybe because you wanted something to write about for your next blog post.
I’ll start off with saying that I am 100% a Bernie supporter.
I’ll be 50 this year. When I was young, from age 17 to my mid 20’s, I did Market Research. We were minimum wage workers, and did everything from Political Polls to consumer product surveys to interviewing heart Drs regarding heart surgery products.
I’m willing to bet that a lot of our Political surveys were actually push polls. We just didn’t know it at that time, because we were so young and uninformed, so we had no clue that the questions were so leading.
I remember one of the girls working there got yelled at by a state legislator because she had said legislature instead of legislator while interviewing him. 🙂
I also remember one time doing a survey that asked people if they used the state parks, if they went to museums, and if they went to the arboretum.
None of us knew how to say arboretum, so everybody was calling it the “a-bore-a-torium” I’m sure many people had been to the arboretum but answered no, because we mispronounced it so awfully. (Not to mention making it sound like a place to get bored to death)
After a few years of doing market research a co-worker and I started realizing that the clients would want to know how people felt about certain things, but the client, had worded the question to give an inaccurate response. The clients would complain that people being surveyed weren’t giving them the information that they wanted to find out. We’d tell the clients “If you want to find out how people feel about {whatever} you need to ask it this way to get an accurate and honest response.” and then we’d suggest how they should re-word the question. The clients would say, “No, keep asking it that way.” The next time we had a meeting they’d complain again, and we’d suggest the re-wording of the question, and they’d re-word it but not the way we suggested. After several times of this, eventually, they would re-word it the way we had suggested, and get the information they were trying to find out. They wouldn’t listen to those “on the front line” who were stuck asking non-sensical biased questions because we didn’t have a degree, but eventually they’d have to admit we were right.
The supervisors would randomly monitor our calls, but we could always tell when they were monitoring because we’d get a small echo back in our phone. My co-worker got someone like you who pointed out that the questions were biased, repetitive, and non-sensical. We agreed but weren’t allowed to say so. She knew the supervisor was monitoring and after the call, she went in to the supervisor and said. “See! We told you this survey was poorly worded, biased, confusing, and way too long, and that guy stuck in there for the whole survey, and you still didn’t get the answers you wanted.” 🙂
Thank you for this piece–I was previously unfamiliar with the practice of pushpolling, but I was recently subjected to a pushpoll call regarding another issue. I thought I was being legitimately polled on an issue I cared about, but the very biased questions presented information I knew to be inaccurate, and they were framed in a way that didn’t allow me to answer how I wanted to–they tried to corner me into responding the opposite way. I was left with a very unsettling feeling, and now I’m at least glad to know what was going on. I appreciate your bringing this practice to light.
You had me right up until you cited Wikipedia as a viable reference source.
This kind of slimy, sleazy low life behavior from the Clinton campaign is only accomplishing one thing. Making the idea of ‘Anyone But Hillary’ an even stronger force. , Now I have another reason to never vote for Hillary. Thanks. Namaste.
Ps- Good job utterly destroying that pathetic Clinton shill. They all should be exposed for the regressive, repub lite wat monger wall street loving parasites they are.
I dont think Bernie’s supporters will be the gullible, I-will-change-my-vote-because-of-a-phonecall type. The support for him is very passionate and quite well informed. All this might do is end up embarrassing Clinton. Which is actually good for Bernie. But for that it is very important that posts such as this get shared widely.
Everyday, a new Bernie Sanders ups the anti in cringeworthy commentary. Also, nice proof dickwad.
An interesting observation regarding many of the comments in this and many other critical of the establishment threads is that; most of the time the comments are personal assaults of the writer or another commenter, they are demeaning and degrading.
They do not relate and discuss the content of the blog or the issue supposedly discussed.
The question here is; “Is it okay to make Push Polls?”
I live in Copenhagen, Denmark. I am a Dane. We don’t have a system like yours, and I am really glad about that. Personally, I find it disgraceful and harming the democracy, using a tactic like PP. That said, a lot of the tactics used in the US, are more and more in use here as well.
And yes, I am praying that enough American voters will vote, and that they will vote for Bernie Sanders, the most sane and sober politician I have experienced in the world for many decades.
Thank you Nolan Dalla for sharing this, I didn’t know about it before and for me to see, it is very important to bring it out in the open.
God bless the world!
Thank you for your outside perspective on this. I like to think that’s more objective than most of the comments I’m reading here.
Yes, there is much propagandizing that occurs in our political “system” (I prefer to think of it as a ‘racket’), seemingly intended to take our focus off the real, fundamental issues affecting our society.
As for the subject of this blog post, I grew up poor, and have been in the position of doing menial work for minimum wage…..or less. I’ve also worked in a couple of call centers. Regardless of what I did, I felt it was incumbent on me to do my job to the best of my ability, and to be open to every opportunity to learn while doing it.
I also drew the line at doing anything I felt was unethical.
Well said! Content, people!
For the record I am a Bernie supporter. The person calling you was probably making minimum wage in a call center. I’ve done that job it’s not fun. Push polling is a disgusting practice that spreads lies and disinformation, but the people on the other end of the phone are the kind of people Bernie talks about when he talks about those most in need of a political revolution. Next time, hang up, call the Hillary HQ, ask for someone in communications and ream them out.
The person who wrote this is a human garbage dump. He probably enjoys berating waitresses who get his order wrong and other working class people. What a douchehat.
Not surprised at the tactics of the Clinton campaign. I am also not surprised that a Bernie supporter could be such a pompous, rude, pretentious asshole. “I’ve been quoted six times by the new York times”, making fun of her pronunciation of “caucus” etc. BTW, the fact that she can’t pronounce caucus correctly would imply she is not a political person, just someone getting paid close to minimum wage doing a job she probably desperately needs. And here is a supporter of the hero of the poor and downtrodden, treating one of that group like she is a piece of shit. Lording his superior knowledge and education over her. Typical leftist.
I once got a push-poll call, though I forget what candidate it was – likely a congress critter.
Here’s what blew my mind though – while I was on the phone, giving my very straight forward, backed up answers, the woman, she would try to talk me into a different answer, and I’d say no, that’s not what I said and she’d go “I’m going to put you down for x” which was always clearly the opposite of what I had said.
About five times of this, I asked her, why did she even need me, if she was just going to make up my answers for me? And she candidly said something about how their system logs the phone time. It clearly didn’t actually collect the voice data, which was a shame. So I hung up on her, because I’ve never ever been pro-conservative and the fact that some woman would lie about it really made me mad. Maybe most people don’t care at all, but I take my politics very seriously – the personal is political for me and it pissed me off.
I wish I had gotten who the hell the company was and her name. All I remember was that they were out of Minnesota.
Push polling is so evil, having worked in politics on campaigns, I’ve watched it tank good people who were ahead… All over lies and innuendo. It should be outlawed, but so should citizens United and a lot of things.
I wish I could look at her desperation as a good sign but… It’s not. It’s horrifying that she will literally do anything to be the president.
This is how the Clinton machine works but never fear if the Obama justice department does their jobs than she will be indicted. Then of course pardoned by Obama. Bernie wins or Biden gets dusted off for a short run. If she does not get indicted Obama gets impeached in his last months of the presidency. What fun this cycle is turning into. Nice.
I work at a government call center. I have to tell people stuff I think it’s not fair sometimes. I understand that, and they have the right to be upset. And they have the right to tell me how they feel. So I take it. SPECIALLY because it involves their finances. SPECIALLY because it has a greater impact on poor people of colors.
Saying that the girl asking the questions was just doing a job is demeaning, she has a brain, just because she works at a call center doesn’t mean she shouldn’t understand the complexities of what she’s doing. And how he roles robs Americans of information.
I’ve also volunteered to make poll calls for Sanders, and I’m proud to say the script allows me to voice my support without bashing Hilary. Yes, I would have complained to my co workers about someone being rude or keeping me on the phone if they were Trump supporters. That’s just offensive. But call center workers are smart enough to tell when a caller has a point. I appreciate this article. Other than the boasting about how many times you have been quoted on nyt… Thanks for sharing your story tho!
For the record, the way they asked his party ID is STANDARD for most reputable polling houses and major political surveys. The NES uses it too and that’s possibly the most important survey used by political scientists. You DO push people to choose a party because most people who end up being “pushed” ARE actually Democrats or Republicans. They just don’t wanna say it the first time around. We’ve seen more and more people hiding behind the independent label in recent years but acting like partisans behind the scene. Not that the author is. Just defending the methodology on that one question. There should be an option for “other party” in that question though. .
Your point was lost on me as I couldn’t get over your arrogant disposition: “it’s caucus…got that…”…wow, I sure wish this article was about your self reflection in the way you conduct yourself. Good luck.
Thank you so very much for this well written and very disturbing article. I hope many many people get to read it. With respect, a NH voter.
Push polls are short. This is a message testing poll. Its could have even been paid for by the Sanders campaign because its much more important to know how your opponent’s message are affecting your numbers than vice-versa.