Riding high after an upset victory over then-Governor Bush in New Hampshire, the tide of the 2000 Republican presidential primaries nevertheless turned against John McCain in South Carolina, where Bush snagged victory from the jaws of defeat by unleashing a slanderous “push poll” accusing McCain of having an illegitimate black baby. The practice of push-polling – in which a campaign staffer poses as a pollster and interviews swing voters, inventing slanderous hypotheticals about their opponent to plant negative ideas in the voters’ mind – is frowned upon even by politicians, but saw wide use in 2000.
Sadly, push polling is about to make a comeback: a new report out of Ohio documents an anti-Obama push-poll campaign, where voters are asked if their support for Obama would change if they “knew” that Obama believed that America “deserved 9/11,” among other scurrilous charges. It’s not necessarily fair to trace this deceitful tactic to the McCain campaign… yet… but if he wanted to prove his quality, now would be a chance to take a stand against the dirty tricks that unfairly cost him his candidacy in 2000. He won’t; but I can dream.
Also out of Ohio, the state reports that the McCain campaign mailed out their own absentee ballot forms to Ohio voters, forms that were slightly modified to have a superfluous, nondescript check-box that, if left unchecked, automatically disqualifies the ballot. While the Ohio government is working overtime to disseminate correct ballot forms to those who suffered from the mistake, 750 voters have already been disenfranchised by this slick, deceptive tactic. Victory by voter suppression: while I confess that I’m not surprised, I’m nevertheless deeply disappointed in the McCain campaign.
In other news, McCain took his first electoral lead today, according to electoral-vote.com, fivethirtyeight, and InTrade. There’s some good news in this – obviously, the lead is the result of a “convention bump,” and little else, and the “bump” is singificantly more noticeable in the South, while it appears fleeting everywhere else.
In her first major interview, Sarah Palin stumbled over prepared answers, visibly faltered when questioned on a basic issue of foreign policy (the “Bush Doctrine” = preemption), and, in a speech the same day, repeated the Old Lie that Iraq perpetrated 9/11. Meanwhile, Barack Obama pledges to go back on the offensive… while passing up an opportunity to slam Palin for insulting community organizers. Meanwhile, McCain blamed his consistent negativism on Barack Obama: if only Obama had met him at town hall meetings, this all could have been avoided… (?)
