Hillary can't lose California and her supporters know it. Who knows what is going to come out in the next 2 days but it has the potential to get ugly. It started last night:
This is reported by the LA Times:
Also, every question about Clinton was curiously positive, Coghlan recalls. The caller said things like, if you knew that Sen. Clinton believed the country had a serious home mortgage problem and had made proposals to....
freeze mortgage rates and save families from foreclosure, would you be more likely or less likely to vote for her?
Ed said, of course, more likely.
Every question about the other candidates was negative. If Ed knew, for instance, that as a state senator Obama had voted "present" 43 times instead of taking a yes or no stand "for what he believed," would Ed be more or less likely to vote for him?
"That's when I caught on," said Coghlan. He realized then that he was being push-polled. That malicious political virus that is designed not to elicit answers but to spread positive information about one candidate and negative information about all others under the guise of an honest poll had arrived in Southern California within days of the important election.
It could become an issue in the closing hours of the campaign.
Someone who obviously favors Hillary Clinton is paying an unidentified company to spread this material phone call by phone call among independent voters, who can, according to California party rules, opt to vote in the Democratic but not the Republican primary on Feb. 5,
Phil Singer, the spokesman for the Clinton campaign. was contacted by e-mail last night. He answered that he was there. He was asked if the Clinton campaign was behind the push-poll, knew who was behind it or had any other information on it. That was at 5:27 p.m. Pacific time Saturday. As of this item's posting time, exactly eight hours later, no reply had been received.
Hillary supporters are attempting to drive down independent turnout for Obama. This is hardball and I hope that the campaign has anticipated this and will be able to counter it effectively. We know how the last minute anti-choice emails sabotaged the surge in NH. Who knows how the robocalls in SC affected Edwards.
Is there a way to counteract these tactics during phonebanking today? I don't know if would be helpful to forewarn voters about these things...
I'm sure NJ and CT will receive they're fair share of these thing tonight and tomorrow too!
LA Times