Hillary Clinton Resorts to “Push Polling” in Nevada

by Scott Creighton

As if her honesty rating wasn’t already about as low as it can get, it seems the Hillary Clinton campaign has resorted to something called “push polling” in Nevada, the site of the next caucus nine days from now. “Push polling” is where someone pretends to be a neutral polling agency and instead, asks slanted, biased questions, basically to smear a targeted candidate. It’s a sign of desperation and Hillary Clinton has apparently already resorted to using it in the third primary season campaign this year after losing New Hampshire by a ton and probably losing Iowa as well (before the Iowa Democratic Party leadership stolen the caucus for her)

A writer named Nolan Dalla has reported that he received a “push poll” call this week from someone trying to smear Bernie Sanders using slanted articles from the Washington Post and the New York Times as well as other equally disingenuous material. Here are two examples of the questions Nolan reports he was asked by the “pollster” on the phone:

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?”…

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?”

Single-payer healthcare would indeed raise people’s taxes by a couple thousand dollars a year but the fact is, it would mean they don’t have to pay insurance premiums ($8,000 to $9,000 a year or even more for a family), co-pays or deductibles. All of those expenses are increasing every year under ObamaCare, by the way. The insurance companies that helped them write the legislation made sure to allow for that. Also, under a single-payer plan, there would be zero people having to file for bankruptcy each year due to unforeseen medical expenses. As it stands, a large percentage of bankruptcies that occur every year are of people who have insurance and still their medical expenses ruin their lives. With single-payer, that would be a thing of the past.

As far as being able to work with congress, Bernie has been doing that for years and years. He caucuses with the Dems and works across the isle with the Republicans all the time on legislation. It’s ridiculous too say he would be less capable of doing the same thing from the White House. It is true that since most of the Washington Consensus works for Big Business, Big Insurance and Big Pharma that it would be difficult for him to pass the legislation he wants, but that’s a different issue. With the establishment on the run on both sides of the artificial divide in D.C. (Trump and Sanders leading) nominating one or both of them for the office of the president would set a new precedent and the political hacks in D.C. would be the first in the country to understand what the changing of the political tide meant for their longevity. So sending him to the White House would have an effect on how willing the rest of the One Party system to work with him.

The arguments really don’t matter though. Not with push polling. And I would seriously doubt the person making the calls would be capable of defending the crap they are spewing with any measure of success or passion for that matter. They’re just reading a script written by influence peddlers of the lowest sort, trying to find uninformed, scared voters on the other end of the line whom they can influence enough to make it seem they are earning their ten dollars an hour.

Nolan goes on to report about another line of disgusting fear-mongering coming from the Clinton campaign on the push poll call:

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 the 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:  

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?”

Nolan Dalla is right to be angry about this new development so early in the Clinton campaign. It’s one of the lowest forms of campaign tricks there is. A lot of people simply don’t have the where-with-all to understand what it is and where it’s coming from. And unfortunately, thanks to the corporate media, they don’t have the knowledge to understand just how dishonest these lines of propaganda and scare tactics really are.

The truth is, Hillary Clinton knows full well just how much money and how many lives will be saved with single-payer healthcare but she doesn’t back it because she’s in the pocket of Big Insurance. And as far as comprehensive immigration reform goes, how is it “progressive” of her to be backing a proposal that came from George W. Bush and Dick Cheney and how can anyone suggest it’s a good thing for the immigrants knowing who created it? A “path to citizenship” is a road to slavery, to a two tiered citizenship system where people are basically assigned to various corporations and forced to work for them for a certain measure of time no matter how they are treated or how little they are paid.

Regardless of what you think about single-payer or comprehensive immigration reform, the fact is, the Clinton campaign is desperate and resorting to one of the lowest tricks in the establishment politics handbook. I mean aside from simply stealing elections via friendly Party co-chairs in Iowa, Microsoft election results software or electronic voting machine hacks.

Maybe the Clinton machine doesn’t have the same faith in the Democratic Party establishment of Nevada that they did in Iowa.

To be fair, Nolan discloses that he volunteers for the Sanders campaign and has donated to it recently.

He published this article back on Feb. 5th, when the Clinton campaign already knew they were going to lose New Hampshire in a big way. With 530 comments on it and over 350,000 page views, you would think he would have gotten some press coverage on the article, but as far as I can see there has been nothing.

As of the 10th of Feb., the Clinton campaign has not responded to Nolan’s request for a statement regarding the push polling.