There’s a long, proud tradition of really negative campaigning in the final hours before a primary–anonymous flyers attacking the other candidates, that sort of thing. My sense is that every campaign does it (including my preferred candidate and Handsome Larry*, who’s (accurately) perceived to have run the most positive campaign.) Every campaign is “shocked” at their rivals’ dirty tricks and indignantly denies its own–until they’re caught, in which case it’s portrayed, truly or falsely, as a one-time mistake by an overzealous volunteer.
But there’s negative campaigning, and there’s negative campaigning. These had better be isolated incidents.
1. From an AP story:
For example, Carson said, an e-mail that proposes to be from campaign manager Joe Trippi asks for interns, but then says because of tight sleeping headquarters, homosexuals are not accepted.
Frances Gehling, a Dean volunteer, said she received a phone call January 16 from a person who identified herself as a Londonderry, N.H., resident who worked for the local Kerry campaign. After Gehling said she supported Dean, the caller asked if it bothered Gehling “that Dean waffles on the issues.”
The caller then asked Gehling about Dean’s statement that “we will learn how to talk about Jesus” when he campaigns in the South. “She asked how someone who is married to a Jew and raising Jewish children can have Christian values,” Gehring said when contacted by The Associated Press.
2. There have been reports that people were calling voters in the middle of the night–4.a.m., say–in New Hampshire pretending to be from the Dean campaign. Atrios summarizes them here.
3. There were rumors on Kos of attacks on Dean’s wife and other, even nastier push polls (would it change your opinion on Dean to know that he was an abortitionist, his history of spousal abuse, etc.) in Iowa, and a recording of a Kerry volunteer calling Dean an “environmental racist.” I didn’t take these very seriously at the time, but these reports have a cumulative effect.
If these reports are true (and I think most are, except maybe the rumors about the abortionist/spousal abuse push polls, which are not well sourced and so ridiculously sleazy that I find them hard to believe), and if they are an organized effort rather than a few wacko volunteers (which is much less clear) we still don’t know who’s responsible. It could be any Democratic candidate, or even a Republican trying to sow discord. My knee jerk reaction and that of many Dean supporters, though, was “it’s probably the Kerry campaign.” I’m sure that’s partly sour grapes, but it’s also partly Occam’s razor. Most of the stories that are confirmed involve the Kerry campaign; Kerry participated in both Iowa and NH; and he was the one most likely to gain if Dean was damaged.
In any case, it needs to stop.
Read more
