"Wow, this is really cool (that) someone's taking the time to ask about these issues," he recalls thinking. "Then they started specifically comparing candidates," he says, asking whether his views would be altered by Barack Obama's relative lack of national experience, or by John Edwards' background as a wealthy trial lawyer.
So after Comly got off the phone, he did what any 21st-century Democratic activist would do: He went to his favorite liberal blog, My Left Wing, and wrote about the questions, which "began to make me queasy. Someone was trying to bash John Edwards and Barack Obama, and pitch Hillary."
Comly's April post was one of four recent blogged reports about what appear to be surveys by Hillary Rodham Clinton's pollster, Mark Penn.
"It was the politics of personal destruction, and I thought only knuckle-dragging, mouth-breathing, Jew-loving homophobic anti-choice neoKKKon breeder Christofascist Rethuglican BushCo Rovebot scum who steal elections--may they all rot in Hell if there is one!--said such nasty things about their opponents. Imagine my disillusionment! How could she do this?""Maybe they've just let this 'Sopranos' thing go to their heads -- whack, whack, whack," joked Paul Maslin, Bill Richardson's pollster, referring to a recent Clinton video spoofing the HBO television series about mobsters.
"Sssshhh! Paul, Paul! For the love of God, don't give her any more ideas!"
He hastened to add, however, that despite bloggers' impressions, testing negative messages is a standard political practice aimed at getting information, not persuading voters. "The questions are legitimate," Maslin said, and the research will help the front-runner Clinton campaign "sit at the top of the hill and