The Mean Season

In case you've forgotten how our current president demolished John McCain in the Republican primary in 2000, here's a reminder. Among other things, his keepers used what is called a push poll, (push one if you agree, two if you disagree, etc) a tactic going on now in congressional districts in Iowa and New York. This has recently been discovered by Mark Blumenthal, who says, "Someone out there would like to see Rove's hoped for 'debate' occur in as many Congressional races as possible. So they are making thousands of calls into Districts held by moderate Democrats spreading the rumor that those officeholders support Bush on wiretapping. They know that Democratic partisans... will be outraged and put pressure on their representatives to harshly criticize Bush on wiretapping. If the members respond to the pressure, the dirty tricksters get the debate they hoped for. If not, the Democrats are forced to put out fires ignited by the push poll in their base."
We've seen what this kind of 'polling' can do. Push polling, the Diebold paperless voting machines,a weighted Supreme Court and the usual Republican dirty tricks portend a mean November.