Thanks for reporting this absolute shande. I better call my older relatives and make sure they're safe from these liars. Makes me plotz, I'm so angry at these schmucks . . .

Is it a sign of desperation, or incompetence, that they're calling Jews in Washington?  

Gee, I can't imagine who would sanction something like *this*. Who could be *this* dastardly?

Oh -- they didn't get to question #11, then:  "Would it effect your vote if you knew that Obama was a trained assassin with a Libyan passport who worked with Carlos the Jackel and wears a vintage SS uniform when he's attending a Black Power church where they ritually desecrate the flag every Sunday?"

Jeez!  It almost makes the "secret muslim" BS relativey harmless.

I received the same call, in southeastern Michigan at around 8:30 pm tonight. When I asked the pollster who he worked for, he said he didn't know. I told him he had a lot of incorrect information he said he was just trying to do his job. Plus the pollster couldn't pronounce a lot of the last names . . .  Since I am not practicing at all, I wonder how I got on this list, maybe the mailing list of our local JCC is circulating or they are just going by surname through the phone books?

It's illegal. Who do you report it to if you get a call?

It's illegal. Who do you report it to if you get a call?

Todd Gitlin - I believe Cohn and his wife live in the battleground state known as Michigan

Funny thing:  all the push polling descriptions are accurate...  I wonder what would happen to Obama's Jewish support if everybody knew these facts?  Oh... that would require an objective media?   Fat chance, then...

Nturner, I don't know how this became "fact," but Zbigniew Brzezinski is not -- NOT -- a foreign policy advisor for Barack Obama. They met once early this year to discuss the Iraq War. Since then nada. Obama's chief Middle East policy advisor is Dan Shapiro.

How long did all of this take?

If it we're talking about something in the 10-20 minute range, it was probably message testing rather than a push poll.  Mark Blumenthal of pollster.com had a few good articles about the difference here www.pollster.com/.../proclinton_push_poll.php and here www.pollster.com/.../message_testing_hear_it_for_yo.php .  Also see the links in those articles.

Push polls are designed to reach a very large number of voters and it just isn't cost-effective to do lengthy interviews for such a large group of people.  Message testing is designed to see how various messages go over with a random sample of the target audience, and only a few hundred people need to be contacted, so long interviews are not prohibitively expensive (and they're necessary because the whole point is to gauge people's reactions).

As Mark writes, though, even if it is a real poll, it doesn't free the pollster from ethical responsibility.  They don't seem to be using a standard of truth any lower than what the McCain campaign has been using in recent weeks, although that's not exactly setting the bar very high.

Also, if this effort (whether push polling or message testing) really is aimed specifically at Jews in Michigan, it's pretty dumb, for the sole reason that Jews in Michigan a) made up 2% of all Michigan voters in 2004, and b) are pretty solidly Democratic as a group.  It's damn near impossible to affect the outcome in Michigan by targeting Jews.  I've made this argument before with regard to Florida, and Jewish voters make up an even smaller portion of the electorate in Michigan.

I'm guessing it's meant to target pro-Israel/anti-Arab voters in general as well as people suspicious of Obama's roots, not just Jews,

Alan: That's simply not true. The Jewish community in Michigan is more hawkish and less reliably Democratic than Jews nationally because of two factors:

1. The huge Arab communities around Detroit, which are obviously very anti-Israel but also many Arab Michiganders and Detroit-area Muslim charities have been investigated for various ties to terrorists in the Middle East.

2. The African-American political community in Detroit is decidedly more hostile to Jews and Israel than the African-American political communities in the rest of the country. I worked for a Jewish law firm in Detroit where countless Jewish attorneys lamented how badly frayed black-Jewish relations are in the city.

As a suburban Jew, everywhere I've ever lived in my entire life, I've always lived with a Democratic congressman. The only exception is Oakland County, Michigan, which includes the heavily Jewish suburbs of Birmingham, Bloomfield, Bloomfield Hills, Farmington Hills, Rochester, Royal Oak, West Bloomfield, etc., home to Republican Congressman Joe Knollenberg. My friends and family who still live there are the only Jews I know who vote for a Republican Congressman every two years (maybe also Mark Kirk in suburban Chicago), and they've been much more suspicious about Obama than Jewish communities anywhere else in the country (with the possible exception of the bubbes in South Florida). I haven't seen any polls of Michigan Jews, but I would guess that Obama is trailing his national Jewish numbers by ten points.

If McCain is trying to flip Michigan, he's going to do it on the back of suspicious should-be Democrats, and the two groups that jump to mind are the Jews in the north and northwest Detroit suburbs and the blue collar voters in northeast and south suburbs. Both groups are susceptible to false McCain campaigning that will attempt to tie Obama to the unpopular/corrupt (Kwame) black and Muslim communities in Detroit.

achester,

For what it's worth, Kerry won Michigan Jews 71-22, a few points worse than his national numbers of 74-25, although those numbers come with a very high margin of error because a the small absolute numbers of Jews polled (margin of error of for MI Jews is 13 or 14 points by my calculations), so you can't really tell an actual difference from statistical noise.

The broader point about Michigan Jews is that there simply aren't that many of them.  Obama could run 20-30 points behind his national Jewish numbers and it would be extremely unlikely to flip the state one way or the other.  In the *best* case scenario for McCain he could gain a fraction of a point.

I thought McCain and his campaign have found their Messiah in Sarah Palin. And yet they still have to keep denigrating Obama to establish an edge. So sad and pathetic and the reality that we may just put this country in the hands of the INCOMPETENT John McCain and Sarah Palin.

Carol

Of the five asssertions you listed, which are untrue, Mr. Cohn?

How can we spread the word through Jewish organizations (synagogues, charities, JCC's, retirement communities) that this is happening?

nturner, your post is, as usual, an example of goyishe kup (look it up).

Obama is a big question mark. Don't let his background and former associations get in the way

achester99  - hat is your sense of how Oakland County will go in November? It's been trending blue over the last decade, but it's fertile ground for McCain or any other moderate GOPer (I remember when it was Broomfield's Hills). How close do you think the race will be in Oakland Co?

r-ennis:

Dumb--dumb!  The point Cohn is making is that this NOT-bona fide polling group is taking these assertions and statements WAAAAAY out of their contexts.  When Hamas makes statements like the one above, they are loaded with devious calculations.  And I think we can all agree that, if Israel were invited to a summit of Muslim nations, it would only prove to be a fraught session of pestering Israel, drawing attention away from peace negotiations.  The way to engage a summit of hostile Arab nations is by making them focus on their own failures, and not be distracting them with a state who is bound to object to the information disseminated at such a summit.  Moreover, the point of the summit would not be to further their agenda of eviscerating Israel; rather, it would be to challenge it in a controlled environment.  

And explain how fundraising for Palestinian charitiesis bad?  Israelis do it!  One could shriek that this money is diverted to terrorists, but by presenting them with money, it becomes trackable.  This helps the rest of the world discern which Palestinian charity is a good one to support, and which of those aid Hamas.  This, in turn, bolsters the moderates and cuts the flow of funding to extremists.  Yet, by relaying this in one, loaded sentence, the pollsters present such an action as the markings of totally opposite intentions.  

tep,

Look at the job ads in the Free Press or craigslist.  It's a joke.  Racism simmers there, but I would portend that, as you say, it's the economy, stupid.

-504.48 The calendar shows 126 days until George Walker Bush walks out of the White House for the last time as President. But historians will look back and say that the Bush Era ended yesterday, September 15th. The day the stock market dropped over

As r-ennis said,

Of the five assertions listed, which ones are untrue?

Don't get your panties in a bunch.  The poller just stated unbearable truths about your man-crush Obama.  You could have simply told him: Yes, I'm Jewish, but I'm an idiot land don't vote based on my identity.

nathang:

HAHAHAHA.  As a McCain supporter, I'd love for you to spread word through Jewish organizations that this is happening.

Rabbi: These nagging pollers say that Hamas and Louis Farrakan is for Obama and Obama's life-long pastor is vehemently anti-Jewish and anti-American!

Congregant: Well is that true?

Rabbi: Well yes, but the point is the nagging pollers.

Congregant: Isn't the point that Obama is loved by enemies of Jews and Israel?

Rabbi: No, the point is nagging pollers calling me during dinner and lecturing me.

TrackBack:

Nah, George W is gonna change the Constitution man! He's gonna declare himself president fo' life.  Like my man Putin.  It's cool that Putin did that, but it ain't cool that Chimphitler Mchalliburton W is gonna do the same.  After all, we all pinko commies and we only dislike capitalist pigs.

Peace out bro.

dylan - Greenberg and Carville reported recently from Macomb Co that race is no longer prominent in working middle-class Reagan Dems' thinking. It's never been terribly important in Oakland Co. (if anything, there's more white guilt than white racism in the tony suburbs).

The q of q's is whether middle-class suburban Detroiters believe the party of Granholm offers more hope for MI than the party of McCain. I don't know the answer to that q.

tep,

I'll get on my family there to report back with observations.  

jw12672 just demonstrated why this stuff works. Allow me to provide a counter-example.

jw12672 and r-ennis, would it affect your vote if you knew that

*John McCain is supported by money from the genocidal, radical Islamic east African petro-dictatorship of Sudan, whose militias have slaughtered, raped, and pillaged thousands of innocent Christians, including children?

*When Federal officials recently cracked down on corrupt junk bond dealers, whose white-collar crimes cost American taxpayers $126 billion, John McCain tried to intercede on behalf of the multi-billionaires who were later found guilty in criminal court and sent to jail.

And so on, and so forth.

And you might rightly say, "Wait, the Keating Five scandal took place three decades ago, and McCain was mostly exonerated and has since apologized." To the push-poller, such details do not matter.

You might say,  "Money from Sudan? What money from Sudan? You mean Cindy McCain's $2 million dollar investments in Sudanese businesses? But there was no reason to believe that those investments helped fund the genocides, and furthermore she sold off most or possibly all of those investments earlier this year, and furthermore, that's her money, not McCains. There's no evidence McCain even knew about those investments." To the push-poller, such details do not matter.

Try coming up with your own push-polling "facts." It's easy and fun!

I think this guilt by association condemnation of politicians as "not good for the Jews" is on its way out.  It's my grandparents generation, now safely in their graves, may have taken it seriously.  My parents' generation, somewhat.  My generation, we're not so dumb as to care whether someone with a kaffir likes the same person we like (if for very different reasons).  Many of us are actually married to non-Jews and non-Christians.  We're much more enlightened and, unlike John McCain, we can make distinctions among different types of Muslims.  Louis Farrakhan used to speak in my neighborhood all the time and I just find him hilariously anachronistic.

More to the point, however, is that Jews are maybe 3 to 5 percent of the electorate.  And the Israel-loving evangelicals are not going to vote Democratic anyway.  So none of this matters.

Just got push-polled Saturday on Obama and racial issues by the same group.  I gave them the liberal hard-line which left the poll-taker practically boiling . . .

Alan,

I agree that Jews probably aren't enough to flip Michigan. But your reference of Kerry's numbers have nothing to do with what I was saying. My whole point is that Obama in particular is worrisome to them because he is black and suspiciously Muslimesque. That's why the scurrilous nature of these push polls has a greater success rate among Michigan Jews than those in Philly, Washington, Boston, Chicago, etc.

Anyway, tep, I don't know Oakland County well enough to make predictions, I'm speaking more from anecdotal evidence. The way I make myself feel better after a weekend spent arguing with ignorant frummies in Queens is that their votes aren't gonna matter. Unfortunately I can't assuage myself that way after an argument in West Bloomfield.

jwl2672  and r-ennis,

All of the questions are untrue: that is the premise of push-polling. (McCain did not, for example, father a black child; this was the substance of the polling conducted against him in SC in 2000.) If any of these claims were true, you can be sure that the McCain campaign would underwrite them. The point is that push-polling circulates rumors with no foundation that some people (like yourselves) will accept as true.

After expressing outrage at the push-polling used against him in South Carolina--and that exploited the dark complexion of his adopted daughter Bridget to support the lie--McCain has hired the guy who ran the operation. This might explain the low road that his campaign has taken.

jwl2672  and r-ennis,

All of the questions are untrue: that is the premise of push-polling. (McCain did not, for example, father a black child; this was the substance of the polling conducted against him in SC in 2000.) If any of these claims were true, you can be sure that the McCain campaign would underwrite them. The point is that push-polling circulates rumors with no foundation that some people (like yourselves) will accept as true.

After expressing outrage at the push-polling used against him in South Carolina--and that exploited the dark complexion of his adopted daughter Bridget to support the lie--McCain has hired the guy who ran the operation. This might explain the low road that his campaign has taken.

From "Pirkei Avot", (Wisdom of the Fathers) "If I am not for myself, who will be for me?" Are you too "enlightened" to relate, stgla?

My generation cheered Jackie Robinson and the Warren Court desegregation decision, produced Dylan, Paul Simon, John Lennon, integrated pop music, walked with Martin Luther King, rode with the freedom riders and were killed in Philadelphia, Mississippi, fought to establish the EPA. Also, my two children both married out of their religion, and I have more Christian friends than Jewish ones.  Don't lecture me on your superior enlightenment.

As for the assertions posed, they are perfectly relevant to Obama's potential stance toward Israel, an issue very important to me as well as my highly assimilated offspring and my excellent friends of all faiths.

Contrary to what you write, kacoles, they are all true. And, more important, relevant. Unlike some of the preposterous examples posed by you and Nippers.

No one is questioning your moral commitments. I am simply pointing out that these questions resemble the very campaign that McCain opined in 2000. The small  grain of truth that lies in these questions is the following:

"the leader of Hamas, Ahmed Yousef, expressed support for Obama and his hope for Obama's victory"

Yes; and Osama bin Laden supported John Kerry. These people are ruthless, but not stupid (as evidenced by the fact that they cannot be caught; and by their short sales on 9/11). It surely contributes to their enrollment to have a Republican administration. Ask yourself: why declare their preference if they know this will cause the American voter to turn against the candidate they "chose"?

"The church Barack Obama has attended is known for its anti-Israel and anti-American remarks"

No; the church that he ATTENDED has an 8,000 member congregation. It is NOT know for anti-Israel remarks; and remarks against the American system that marginalizes blacks is hardly unusual in a black church.  

"Jimmy Carter's anti-Israel national security advisor is one of Barack Obama's foreign policy advisors"

No; his consultation with people associated with former presidents hardly makes the person a member of his staff.

So no: they are not "all true"; they are substantially false.

David Kurst, of TalkingPointsMemo, reports that Republican Jewish Coalition sponsored the poll to "understand why Barack Obama continues to have a problem among Jewish voters." I'm sure they're really concerned about that - being Republicans and all. The last I heard Obama was still outpolling their candidate two-one among Jewish voters. That's the kind of problem politicans usually sell their granny to have.

talkingpointsmemo.com/.../217385.php

r-ennis declares:  "As for the assertions posed, they are perfectly relevant to Obama's potential stance toward Israel."

No they aren't.  Obama has already indicated his actual, not merely his potential, stance toward Israel, and it is supportive and unambiguously so.

Don't spread silly Republican lies and rumors -- it's bad for the complexion and the intelligence!

At least one PAC still thinks peoples' bubbies will decide the election . The Republican Jewish Coalition