Political scientist Nolan Dalla claims to be “push polled” by Clinton’s campaign | Hacker News Reader

Political scientist Nolan Dalla claims to be “push polled” by Clinton’s campaign

nolandalla.com

55 pointsanonymfus27 comments

The author spends most of this lengthy post congratulating himself for winning an argument against a poorly-educated call-center worker who is required to read from a script. This leaves a pretty bad taste in my mouth. Apart from anything else, it distracts from the point about alleged push-polling which is notionally the reason for the post.

Also, I didn't get the impression that he was congratulating himself, just being a bit dramatic, and clearly pretty emotionally worked up over the fact the Clinton campaign was resorting to such an underhanded and dirty tactic. But, he definitely did go more than a little overboard. He probably could have been much more effective in getting more info or changing the caller's mind if he had been calmer. Now the caller will just remember being yelled at by some angry person, and not the message he was trying to get across.

[Edited because I'm clearly still half asleep and probably shouldn't be commenting HN until after I get out of bed and have some coffee.]

I'll leave open the possibility that I'm missing something here, but all immediate evidence points to Nolan Dalla being a man.

Hah, well, I can't say I know something you don't. I'm not sure where I got that from. I thought about double checking before writing but I didn't. Lesson learned.

http://www.nolandalla.com/category/picture-1/

> INTERVIEWER: Mr. Dalla, do you have a few minutes to share your opinions with us?”

> ME: “Sure, why not? Go ahead.”

Additionally the disclaimer that the author is working on the Sanders campaign should have come up front.

As in "is advocating for", or "is a supporter of" Sanders, not "is employed by"; or at least that's the impression I get.

Not sure how you get that from "working actively for".

I'm not sure what your point here is but I see several possibilities:

  * Is independently supporting Sanders' campaign, maybe even volunteering.
  * Is gainfully employed by a pro-Sanders PAC.
  * Is gainfully employed by a something other than a PAC that is pro-Sanders.
  * Is gainfully employed directly by the Sanders campaign.
  * Something else

It isn't clear to me which of those is the case, but I assume it's the first. If he's actually employed by Sanders, that'd make his post a pretty odd thing to do. I think there are a lot better ways to have dealt with it (actually, I guess that's true either way).

Especially since he includes this earlier in the piece to make him seem like an impartial observer:

> For those who suspect that I’m a Clinton-hater, nothing could be further from the truth. I’ve written glowingly about Clinton many times and even gone so far as to call her “the most accomplished woman in American history.” Even with these recent revelations I’m about to disclose, I continue to stand by those words of praise.

I mean, you're not a Clinton hater, but that you are "working actively for" her opponent might be worth a mention in the same breath.

Asked myself the same thing. How much time does one has to loose to write an entire post about having political arguments with the human equivalent of a chatbot..

I was hanging on for a while, but he lost me here:

> ME: “I could destroy any one of your arguments in just a couple of seconds. Do you realize you are talking to someone with a degree in political science who has probably written more about politics than everyone in your office put together?

There's an entire subreddit (/r/iamverysmart) for this kind of stuff.

He could have made the same point by relaying the questions he was asked but without his responses, but he opted for self-gratification. Too bad, because he does have a point about push polling being a really dirty practice. I still remember back to the South Carolina scandal with Bush and McCain.

Well, a lot of what Bernie is saying around Clinton's speeches to big banks is sort of push innuendo as well, since he has no proof that this was anything but what it looks like. tl;dr: politics is dirty.

Also, if you are looking for an anti-pattern for how to influence people, this is a great example. The author makes it about the poorly paid worker instead of about the tactic, which makes you more sympathize with the worker being battered by this know it all.

I did not read that in the article at all. It's about the "poll" questions, and their leading innuendos.

Would it be acceptable for a banking regulator to be paid millions / year for a few hours work by the companies they are claiming to regulate?

It doesn't require innuendo to believe it disqualifies someone for the role as regulator-in-chief. Calling it innuendo is a talking point to deflect that taking this type of money is troubling behaviour for a public servant.

I hope Dalla reads this comment. It'll be a shame if the important part of the message is missed because people took offense at his tone with the campaigner.

The writer, who appears to be a political scientist, doesn't know much about political campaigns, or at least how political campaign polling works. This wasn't a push poll. A push poll wouldn't waste time asking the voter for demographic information or about likelihood to vote - they would get to the negative info they want to spread within a few seconds of the call connecting. Instead, this sounds to me like the common format for a campaign poll that is used to measure the effectiveness of negative messages (so, calling a small # of voters for the purpose of fine-tuning negative ads, etc). If he had kept listening, he likely would have heard the pollster test negative messages on Clinton as well (this is also common - you're trying to figure out what messages work against you at the same time that you test your opponent's negatives). I imagine the Sanders campaign is conducting similar polls (almost any campaign with more than a couple of million dollars raised would conduct a poll like this) and, in fact, this very poll could have been coming from the Sanders campaign.

Woof. The tone of this piece is fairly painful to absorb.

So, this person claims to be for the working class, then effectively harasses some poor shlub on the phone who's probably getting paid minimum wage to read their script?

I'm not sure how you're framing that as a class issue. Her concerns were about the dishonesty, and it sounds like the supervisor or Clinton herself would have got the same treatment.

The author should have asked to speak with the supervisor or Clinton herself.

He did. The supervisor never called back.

Didn't they?

Do you think it is inconsistent to be in favour of policies "for the working class" and have issues with someone doing something you think is reprehensible if that person is on minimum wage and they were "just following orders"?

I think there are a lot of people who are for an abstract idea of the working class but don't have much empathy for real human beings who have to make tough decisions in order to put food on the table.

"I could destroy any one of your arguments in just a couple of seconds. Do you realize you are talking to someone with a degree in political science who has probably written more about politics than everyone in your office put together?"

Oookay.

Also, nice Godwin.

I agree with you that the tone of the article distracts from the allegation that is being made.

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