On the Ground

If you want a taste of what the Mccain camp is doing on the ground, I reprint below one person's experience with a "push poll" done on behalf of the campaign. A push poll is a campaign tool inwhich polling data is secondary to conveying negative messages about your opponent. It is great way to get out a negative message because people tend to think pollsters are unbiased and truthful. (Also, the polls are usually not funded by the campaigns, so they are tough to trace.) A journalist from the Atlantic got the same call.

I received an incredibly offensive, anti-Obama push-poll tonight from 'Opinion Access Corporation.' When I said that I was voting for Obama, they asked if I would be more or less likely to vote for Obama if I knew that he voted to let convicted child sex offenders out early, voted to allow convicted child sex offenders to live near schools, is for sex education in Kindergarten, voted for some offensive and incredibly graphic abortion procedure, and so on and so on for 5 minutes. This was a really offensive push-poll. They also brought up the statements of Rev. Wright and Michelle Obama."

The sex education thing is funny. What they don't mention is that the plan Obama supported consisted of teaching Kindergartners about good and bad touches and how to avoid being a victim of a predator.

UPDATE: The Republican Jewish Coalition is taking responsibility for the poll. They claim it was just a "message poll" (that tests the viability of certain lines of attack) and not a push poll.