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View Full Version : Fed up with political robo-calls?


Lindsey
November 5th, 2006, 10:36 PM
The latest Republican dirty trick (http://mathewgross.com/community/node/1284) -- and a method to fight them. And possibly an even better method in the last several paragraphs of this article (http://www.philly.com/mld/dailynews/news/local/15898729.htm).

--LIndsey

Judy G. Russell
November 6th, 2006, 09:50 AM
The latest Republican dirty trick (http://mathewgross.com/community/node/1284) -- and a method to fight them. And possibly an even better method in the last several paragraphs of this article (http://www.philly.com/mld/dailynews/news/local/15898729.htm).Good grief. At least in my district, the calls (and there are zillions of them -- my answering machine was jammed when I got home and had kicked over to the Verizon voicemail!) were mostly "don't vote for those evil Democrats!" calls. Except for one short nice positive call "from Bill Clinton" for the Democratic congressional candidate.

Lindsey
November 6th, 2006, 05:17 PM
I'd like to think there was something that could be done about those robocalls within the framework of the First Amendment. Deliberate harassment ought to be made illegal, and with prison time attached to it, to avoid having the fines written off as a cost of doing business. One woman in Illinois reported getting the same call 21 times in the course of a week.

And in the chutzpah category: New Hampshire law makes it illegal to make prerecorded calls to voters on the national Do Not Call list. The NRCC was thus in violation of New Hampshire law. (And not for the first time: they've currently got Republican operatives doing time for a phone jamming escapade they pulled in New Hampshire on election day in 2002.) The NRCC at first agreed to stop calling the numbers on the "no call" list, but now they're saying, "We are a federal organization campaigning about a federal race. We feel that New Hampshire law does not apply to what we are doing."

Also in the egregious category: this GOP mailer (http://blogs.nydailynews.com/dailypolitics/archives/2006/11/so_what_are_you_1.php) being circulated in New York.

I never used to be a straight-ticket voter, but this sort of thing has pushed me into becoming one.

--Lindsey

Lindsey
November 6th, 2006, 05:40 PM
A list of 20 districts (http://www.tpmmuckraker.com/archives/001940.php) known to be targeted with these robocalls, along with a couple of audio links, one of them an answering machine playback of a series of calls made to trash Tammy Duckworth. (The NRCC apparently has spent more than $8500 in Duckworth's district on the robocall effort alone.)

--Lindsey

Judy G. Russell
November 8th, 2006, 06:49 PM
Also in the egregious category: this GOP mailer (http://blogs.nydailynews.com/dailypolitics/archives/2006/11/so_what_are_you_1.php) being circulated in New York. I never used to be a straight-ticket voter, but this sort of thing has pushed me into becoming one.
I think those tactics are starting to really backfire. Tom Kean Jr.'s negative campaigning clearly cost him votes in NJ...

Lindsey
November 8th, 2006, 07:10 PM
I think those tactics are starting to really backfire. Tom Kean Jr.'s negative campaigning clearly cost him votes in NJ...
I think that may be what hurt Allen in the final days of the campaign, too. Webb was down a little bit in the polls prior to that, though not by more than the margin of error, but the last poll released, on November 6, had them at 50-50 (and that was pretty much spot on).

The networks are still saying "too close to call," but at this point, barring some catastrophic screw-up somewhere, I can't see that Allen could possibly overcome the lead Webb currently has.

I was not all that enthusiastic about Webb in the beginning; sure, I preferred him to Allen, who I have never been able to stand, but he seemed like just another warmed-over Republican, and one who was impossibly stiff in public. But as time has gone on, and he has loosened up a bit in front of crowds, I've come to realize that he is a very straightforward and down-to-earth sort of guy, just the kind of politician that people always say they really want.

The Nation had a very nice article (http://www.thenation.com/docprint.mhtml?i=20061023&s=moser) about him several weeks ago that made that very point.

In Castlewood Webb heeds his own advice to Democrats: Respect the voters you're addressing. His speech is virtually identical to the one he gave in "liberal" northern Virginia--right down to the Marx and Engels references--and carries precisely the same message: Bush and Allen's war is a disaster, and working Americans are getting shafted while corporations and CEOs rake in record profits. One thing's different here, though: Webb's laconic delivery, far from a liability, testifies in shorthand that he's no slick politician. Which makes him a far cry from his opponent, says Sam Church, UMW local's political coordinator. "Allen doesn't relate to working people--has he ever had a job?"

Perched in a lawn chair nearby and clutching his cane, Robert Ervin--who left the mines in 1979 after thirty-eight years--doesn't mince words. "George Allen? He's the nearest nothing ever been in this country. He's a big old fake, that's all." If enough Virginians end up agreeing with that assessment, Allen will be in a heap of trouble on November 7. And for all his lack of political panache--in fact, partly because of it--Webb will have pulled off something few thought possible: making the Republican in a Southern race look like the one who's unreal, elitist and out of touch with regular folks.

For a lot of Virginians, it's been looking like that ever since Labor Day. The holiday doubles as the state's annual kickoff for election seasons, and it's long been obligatory for politicians running statewide to appear in the big Laborfest Parade in Buena Vista, not far from the Blue Ridge Parkway. This year was a little different. Jimmy Webb was about to ship out to Iraq and his dad, the antiwar candidate, decided to skip the biggest political day of the year to say goodbye.

"Everybody had heard where Webb was that day, and why," recalls Charley Conrad. "So people are standing there watching the parade, and what do they see coming down the street but George Felix Allen, in a big white ten-gallon hat and those fancy boots he always wears, grinning and waving from atop a brown-and-white horse called--I'm not kidding--Bubba. And all I could think was, I sure hope people are paying attention."

--Lindsey

Judy G. Russell
November 11th, 2006, 01:05 PM
The networks are still saying "too close to call," but at this point, barring some catastrophic screw-up somewhere, I can't see that Allen could possibly overcome the lead Webb currently has.We were in the waiting room of the cath lab at Duke yesterday when the special announcement came over the TV with Allen conceding the election. (a) I'm amazed. (b) I'm thrilled. It dawned on me Thursday morning that the route I took to my sister's house had me going only through states that had elected Democratic senators -- NJ, PA, MD, WVA and VA. Sigh... Felt gooooooood.

Lindsey
November 12th, 2006, 12:37 AM
We were in the waiting room of the cath lab at Duke yesterday when the special announcement came over the TV with Allen conceding the election. (a) I'm amazed. (b) I'm thrilled. It dawned on me Thursday morning that the route I took to my sister's house had me going only through states that had elected Democratic senators -- NJ, PA, MD, WVA and VA. Sigh... Felt gooooooood.
The speculation on TPM is that the GOP was afraid that probing into the election too deeply with a recount might uncover sources of dirty tricks that the GOP preferred to stay in the shadows, but if that's the case, they're too late: the state secretary of elections had already turned at least some of those complaints over to the FBI to investigate. That investigation will go ahead regardless of the election outcome.

I think, though, that Allen realized that while Webb's lead was only a very small percentage of the total votes, that small percentage still represented far more votes (~7200) than it was at all likely would be made up by a recount, especially after the statewide canvas turned up no major problems. The only substantial vote shift in that process was a tabulation glitch in one county that led to a shift of 1000 votes to Allen, but Webb was still too far ahead to catch. The last statewide recount (which was just last year) only resulted in a shift of a couple hundred votes.

Also, Republicans have painted themselves into an ideological corner after railing against recounts as unsporting and selfish in 2000 and 2004. Notice, too, how both Webb and Tester in Montana did not wait for a concession from their opponents, but claimed victory as soon as the poll results could reasonably justify it (and in both cases, even before the networks -- who were obviously gun-shy this year -- and the exit polls had called it for them). Chris Matthews complained about that as just one more bit of gracious protocol discarded in an increasingly bare-knuckles age, but I'm sure that both candidates, and Democrats as a whole, have learned from the mau-mauing that Gore was subjected to in 2000 that it's important to enter the recount phase, if there is one, as the perceived winner.

--Lindsey

Lindsey
November 12th, 2006, 12:38 AM
We were in the waiting room of the cath lab at Duke yesterday
Speaking of that: how are things going for Kacy at this point?

--Lindsey