I received an odd phone call here in South Dakota from the Clinton campaign tonight. And I think I, like so many of us, have such campaign fatigue I’m not sure if I’m angry or just sad about it. A Clinton volunteer called my home at 8 p.m. The caller identified himself and told me he was calling on behalf of Hillary Clinton. He asked if he could count on my support in the primary next week. I was very polite (stress is just not good for me these days) and said I was sorry, but I already voted and did not vote for Senator Clinton, but for Barack Obama. That should have been the end of the phone call. I told him I already voted.
Instead, the volunteer was armed with considerable information (bad information) and proceeded to interrogate me about why I voted for Obama and, more interestingly, why I didn’t vote for Hillary. The volunteer asked me what I thought about the states Clinton won that Barack didn’t. I told him it depends on what states he was talking about and that I wasn’t worried about how Obama would do in many of those states in the fall. He berated me and I mentioned states in which Obama was polling ahead of Clinton and was beating McCain. He told me I was wrong had old polling information from Ohio and Pennsylvania to back up his claims. I suggested those were old numbers and mentioned again that I didn’t think it would be a problem in the fall.
The caller got particularly exercised when he asked me why I voted “against” Senator Clinton. I noted the Rovian tactics of the campaign and refusal to work for the betterment of the party’s chances in the fall. At that, the caller became even more upset and ended the call after I said, “this phone call is indicative of the problems with the Clinton campaign and some of its supporters.”
Again, I already voted, so what’s done is done and this guy wasn’t going to change my mind. But don’t you think any normal campaign would want voters to leave a conversation such as this one with a positive or at least neutral feeling toward the volunteer and the campaign – even if they support the other candidate? I mean, after I mentioned I voted for Obama ALREADY, he could have simply said, “Well, thank you.” or “Thanks for being a/voting democrat.” or “I’m sorry to hear you won’t be voting for Clinton in the primary, but I hope you will consider voting for Sen. Clinton if she is the nominee…” – SOMETHING positive, right?
Doesn’t this seem like a poor way to cultivate future support, should Hillary need it?
I suspect that a lot of South Dakotans are receiving similar, pushy phone calls from the Clinton campaign. And it probably only signifies that Hillary’s supporters have fully bought into her victimhood to the point where they’ll browbeat fellow Democrats who simply don’t support the senator’s campaign. It’s sad, really.
A few years ago, I probably would have engaged in quite a heated conversation with this guy, but it’s just not worth the stress and energy now.
She’s going to lose this state anyway – perhaps the hostility stems, in part, from the desperation?
There’s so much between the lines in your post. First, the caller wasn’t trained at all. That the information was old (and easy to check out) shows that there aren’t real pros organizing the calling. And that the (?) volunteer was willing to waste all that time on someone who had already voted was also telling.
We started out semi-supporting Clinton in our family, months ago–just keeping an open mind and printing out a lot of Obama policy docs to discuss. One by one, the stories of campaign mismanagement got dropped on us and finally we came to the conclusion that if she couldn’t manage the good old boys she couldn’t manage a country. I’m sad to say it as a woman.
Exactly. A political call is a sales call and needs to be treated as such, and the number one rule of a sales call is: Time is money. If you are not going to make a sale, politely end the call and move on to the next one.
If you’re going to argue with people, be a radio talk show host. The goal of someone like the caller in question is to get people to vote for Clinton, period. If you irritate or annoy the person you’re calling, even if they’ve already voted for Obama or indicated they are going to do so, they have friends they talk to. They write blog posts. They write letters to the editor. The effect of such a bad call is hard to estimate.
I won’t EVER vote for her for ANYTHING, in a choice of Democrats situation. Not for nothing, never, not ever.
Of course, this is accompanied by the standard disclaimer: I vote Democratic, and if she is the nominee of my party, I would vote for her.
Me either. That’s been my stance since last fall. I forgot to mention, too, that they asked specifically for me (I am a woman). My husband did not get a phone call. Makes me wonder if they are just calling women in SoDak?
The phone number was from Sioux Falls, so I’m guessing the call came from someone at the SF Clinton HQ. It didn’t show up in any reverse directories, though.
I also received a recorded call from George McGovern yesterday as well, urging me to vote for Obama. His call was much more polite 🙂
Oftentimes such numbers are temporary numbers, assigned for a set period of time out of a pool allocated for things like remotes to sports events and the like. Or at least that’s how it used to work.
Apropos of nothing, the other day at the bus stop some older gal was giving out buttons that said OLD WHITE WOMEN FOR OBAMA. My wife got a big kick out of it; she’s mostly pro-Obama due to the fact that she has never liked Clinton, but she wore the button all over a folk festival we went to on Monday.
Not a good sign when your supporters go ballistic on supporters of the other candidate.
is not a normal campaign. Her supporters are more in love than making a political decision. I have never heard such idiotic statements about a POLITICIAN as I have about Clinton – “she is so brave” . I did read those in 1984, about Big Brother, but not in real life.
Like Omir said, when making calls, time is money. If you call a strong supporter–or, in your case, you’ve made plain that you’ve voted for Obama already–then what in the hell are those volunteers doing?
Move on–so to speak–and do so politely. This isn’t difficult. Talk about Kool-Aid. They’re obviously taking it by IV drip.
I’ve heard similar stories of volunteers questioning, being condescending and even berating voters. They’ve lost their damned minds, I tell you. So if they don’t want to help Obama, I say GOOD! I wouldn’t want them anywhere near the voters we need to win the general.