Next time someone quotes Rasmussen polling results, think of this!
http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2007/09/27/schoen/index.htmlDouglas Schoen and Hillary's slimy pollsters
(updated below)
One of the more baffling aspects of "political journalism" in the United States is the mind-numbing obsession which most of the political press has with "horse race" analysis. Read any of the mainstream political magazines -- The New Republic, National Review, Politico, the major newsweeklies -- or view any of the cable news shows filled with the analysts who think they are the super-sophisticated insider political types and virtually all they ever do, literally, is prattle on in the most speculative and gossipy manner about which presidential candidates are winning and losing.
Aside from all the other obvious critiques made of this practice, the resulting chatter is unbelievably boring. I say it is "baffling" because it is hard to understand why someone would want to become a political journalist and then spend most of their time engaged in this sort of petty, substance-free chatter about which campaign has inched ahead and which one has fallen behind every day. It's all transparently baseless and meaningless. Look at any of the polling data or the predominant conventional wisdom for the last several elections months before the first primary vote was cast and, in retrospect, it all ends being completely misinformed.
In September of 2003, Wesley Clark and Howard Dean led every Democratic poll, and all of the cable news and political magazine horserace chatter was a complete waste of air. For people who chose for their careers to write about political issues, don't they have any interest at all in covering more substantive matters?
In any event, the Hillary Clinton campaign certainly recognizes that, in light of how our mainstream press covers the presidential campaign, perception of polling success is one of the critical factors in determining how a candidate is discussed -- certainly far more important than the substance of what the candidate is actually advocating. That is why Clinton's campaign is dominated by the execrable pollster Mark Penn, who manages single-handedly to embody, all in one person, everything that is sickly and wrong with our political establishment.
Penn has the perfect long-time (now former) partner in Douglas Schoen, whose purpose in life is to argue that Democrats must accommodate George Bush and his radicalism (by, among other things, embracing Joe Lieberman) -- and repudiate their embarrassing and rabid base -- as much as possible if they want to succeed. One of the most disturbing aspects of a Clinton presidency is that individuals such as Penn and Schoen -- along with the likes of telecom lobbyist Jamie Gorelick and Iraq War cheerleader Mike O'Hanlon -- are highly likely to occupy critical positions of power in a Clinton administration, just as they did in the last Clinton administration.
But Schoen's problems go beyond mere establishment-perpetuating ideology.
In light of the importance of perceptions of polling success for the Clinton campaign, Schoen -- ever since he left the Penn firm -- has been holding himself out as an independent polling analyst for Rasmussen Reports and other media venues, concealing his long-standing ties to the Clintons and writing one ostensibly objective analysis after the next which has no purpose other than to depict Clinton's candidacy as an inevitability.The front page today of Rasmussen Report touts an "analysis" entitled "Hillary's Great Week," by Douglas Schoen:
more...
http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2007/09/27/schoen/index.html
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