Intellectual Dishonesty: Creigh's Magic Never-Never Land Pot o' Imaginary Polls

With all due respect, Kenton

The criticism in this diary is a little absurd. You commit the same sin of which you commit the Deeds campaign.

For example, you write about how you had to "read carefully" to find the basis for the Deeds' campaign release, i.e., that the poll found Deeds was leading among Democrats.

Leaving aside whether this finding of the poll was a sufficient basis for the campaign's fundraising email, did you really have to read carefully? You imply that the rationale for the Deeds' email was so minute that you -- one of the brighter people in the Virginia blogosphere -- had to "read carefully" to find it.

I mean, after all, as your screen shot shows, the Deeds campaign hid the rationale 5 lines into the email!

In fact, one could argue that the Deeds' campaign spin here is strained. I'm a Deeds supporter, and as I wrote at RK, I thought the poll was fairly inconclusive. But for you to write a front page diary taking the campaign to task for what is, in reality, fairly standard campaign spin in an effort to raise funds is equally strained.

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by: aznew @ Mon Dec 08, 2008 at 18:50:03 PM CST

Just because campaigns do it...

doesn't mean it's ok. I'm still undecided in this. I like Creigh and Brian both a lot. I do agree with Kenton, though, that putting this much spin on inconclusive numbers on the part of the Deeds campaign is somewhat misleading towards supporters. I'm sure they could have come up with something else for their fundraising solicit this week. And unless I've missed something, Brian didn't send out an email trying to spin the numbers his way, even though the general election head-to-heads are in his favor.

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by: Aimee Fausser @ Mon Dec 08, 2008 at 18:58:05 PM CST

[ Parent ]

I agree with all of that, to a point

I'm not sure I agree that the Deeds email was misleading. But to slam a campaign for putting "this much spin" on the poll just strikes me as a real dog-bites-man story.

As for whether the Moran campaign issued anything, I can't say. But Moran supporters in the Virgnia blogosphere have been furiously spinning this, from what I can tell. Nothing wrong with that (and just to be clear, I don't think this spinning is at all emanating from the campaign -- it's what the blogosphere is all about).

I'm just not sure this sort of minor league stuff is the kind of thing that should give anyone the vapors.

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by: aznew @ Mon Dec 08, 2008 at 19:09:17 PM CST

[ Parent ]

This is my personal perspective, but

What I personally saw happening among those I know was Deeds supporters excitedly saying they were ahead, and Moran supporters looking at the head to head matchups and being a little upset that Deeds' people were bragging about a poll that had mixed results for them. The reactions I speak of were from a couple hours before the campaign email came out.

It is a pretty insignificant issue, and doesn't say anything about either of the candidates, but it's frustrating (at least to me).

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by: Aimee Fausser @ Mon Dec 08, 2008 at 19:13:58 PM CST

[ Parent ]

I can't comment on your personal experience with Deeds supporters

but I will say that I support Deeds, and my take on the poll was that it was inconclusive, as I wrote at RK and Blue Commonwealth.

http://www.raisingkaine.com/sh...

http://www.bluecommonwealth.co...

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by: aznew @ Mon Dec 08, 2008 at 19:24:11 PM CST

[ Parent ]

Well...

I assure you I can read. I was not expecting in the least that dryly noting I was quite confused by the same poll showing two separate conclusions meant I had to read carefully to survive five lines of email.

(As an aside, "leaving aside whether this finding of the poll was a sufficient basis for the campaign's fundraising email" does eliminate the whole reason for the post in favor of focusing on "reading carefully.")

Besides, wouldn't just flat-out calling the poll what it was, a tie, make a good fundraising email by itself without having to subject itself to snickers over how much spin's in there? Donors don't have to be lied to.

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by: Kenton Ngo @ Mon Dec 08, 2008 at 19:12:10 PM CST

[ Parent ]

Those were your words

But obviously my point was that I could pick apart your diary as well as you could pick apart the Deeds email. your diary was reasonable blogging, while the Deeds email was reasonable campaign spin. Both are fair subjects for criticism; neither deserves as much attention as we have already paid to them.

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by: aznew @ Mon Dec 08, 2008 at 19:21:53 PM CST

[ Parent ]

No, not really, you really didn't n/t

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by: Todd Smyth @ Mon Dec 08, 2008 at 20:48:59 PM CST

[ Parent ]

I'm not quite sure what you're saying here...

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by: aznew @ Mon Dec 08, 2008 at 21:17:42 PM CST

[ Parent ]

Mame Reilly sent out the same sort of e-mail

... spinning the poll as showing that Brian was the only Democrat to beat McDonnell, though his lead in the poll is less than the margin of error.

And McAuliffe's folks put out the spin that he wasn't even a candidate yet, and look how well he is doing!

The reality, as I said on Democratic Central -- http://www.democraticcentral.c... -- is that the poll shows nothing more than the fact that any Democrat is neck-and-neck with Bob McDonnell at this point.  Heck, at this point last year, John Edwards could brag that he was the only Democrat who was beating all of the Republican candidates in a head-to-head.  That worked out really well for him...

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by: cvllelaw @ Wed Dec 10, 2008 at 23:41:20 PM CST

[ Parent ]

pertinent facts

So the discussion is how misleading does a fundraising email have to be to be viewed as over the line? How much truth has to be left out before it stops being the truth? This is all slippery slope stuff and we all have to make up our own minds on where that line is and we have to do it every day of our lives.

The one thing we may be able to agree upon is this; if we wanted to find out the real sense of the poll, we would need more information than the "Team Deeds" email provided even though the email suggested it was telling you the pertinent results. It is instructive to know that when we hear a Deeds assertion, we need to keep fact checking to be sure we actually have all of the facts.

Now, if you're a Deeds supporter, you won't like what I just said. However, look on the bright side - I didn't mislead you at all. :)

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by: gregkane @ Tue Dec 09, 2008 at 00:01:33 AM CST

My take.

I'll certainly concede that Sen. Deeds' latest fundraising email is a classic example of campaign spin.

However, I don't think that this particular spin was anywhere near as insidious as this post makes it seem. The Deeds campaign took a poll, and they highlighted their area of strength in that poll.

In this particular case, their strength was that Creigh Deeds leads the Democratic field in terms of favorability ratings among Democrats. Democrats vote in Democratic primaries, hence why Rasmussen felt justified in writing in their analysis:

Deeds is also the favorite among Democratic voters who will select a gubernatorial nominee in a June primary.

For the Deeds campaign to use that quote in a fundraising email seems perfectly fair to me.

That said, I would like to draw attention to this line from the post above:

So, therefore, a sensible conclusion would be Creigh Deeds Tied With Bob McDonnell. Or perhaps if you wanted to be more general, the race is tied.

That is a sensible conclusion. I would now like to direct your attention to a paragraph from the very same Deeds fundraising email about which this post was written. It's the paragraph immediately following the point where your screen shot ends. That paragraph reads:

In their poll of 500 likely Virginia voters last week, Rasmussen also found that if the election were held today, Senator Deeds would be dead even with the Republican nominee. In fact, all three Democrats are essentially tied in a hypothetical general election match up. This is great news for our party and demonstrates just how committed Virginians are to continuing the Warner-Kaine brand of leadership that has brought us so far.

So, the email does draw the conclusion that Deeds and McDonnell are tied, and it draws the same conclusion about both Brian Moran and Terry McAuliffe.

All of this just seems so harmless to me.

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by: Johnny Camacho @ Tue Dec 09, 2008 at 07:30:08 AM CST

I'm with you, Kenton

I don't have a chosen candidate in this race (other than not Terry McAuliffe), and I'm on both email lists, and I found this message from the Deeds campaign disappointing. I saw the results of the poll first on the Post's Virginia Politics blog, so when I got the Deeds email, my first reaction was "whaaa?"

If Rasmussen had polled on the question of the primary, I would agree that this is just standard spin. Deriving that implication from other measures and implying that they did poll that is where it crosses the line.

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by: Redshift @ Wed Dec 10, 2008 at 16:52:00 PM CST

hahahahaha

Every candidate spins its politics 101

This line takes the cake though

"I hate bashing other Democrats, I really do,"

then why did you even post.  I nievely had hope for you but you are well on the way of becoming another political
hack.

Kenton why dont you just admit you are in the tank for Moran ok buddy

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by: novamiddleman @ Fri Dec 12, 2008 at 08:52:14 AM CST