Wash Post polling editor is mad at questions about impeachment

"Naperville, Ill.: Why haven't you polled on public support for the impeachment of George W. Bush?

Richard Morin: This question makes me mad...

_______________________

Seattle, Wash.: How come ABC News/Post poll has not yet polled on impeachment?

Richard Morin: Getting madder...

_______________________

Haymarket, Va.: With all the recent scandals and illegal/unconstitutional actions of the President, why hasn't ABC News/Washington Post polled whether the President should be impeached?

Richard Morin: Madder still...

_______________________

Dublin, Ireland: In a statement on Sunday, John Dean, former White House counsel during Watergate, stated that President Bush is "the first President to admit to an impeachable offense." Will The Washington Post be polling about impeachment of the President in the near future, now that this topic has taken on national significance?

Richard Morin: An impeachment demand from Ireland? Oh my gawd. Now I'm furious.

Let me explain.

For the past eight months or so, the major media pollsters have been the target of a campaign organized by a Democratic website demanding that we ask a question about impeaching Bush in our polls.

The website lists the e-mail addresses of every media pollster, reporters as well as others. The Post's ombudsman is even on their hit list.

The website helpfully provides draft language that can be cut-and-pasted into a blanket e-mail.

The net result is that every few months, when this website fires up the faithful with another call for e-mails, my mailbox is filled with dozens and dozens of messages that all read exactly the same (often from the same people, again and again). Most recently, a psychology professor from Arizona State University sent me the copy-and-paste e-mail, not a word or comma was changed. I only hope his scholarship is more original.

We first laughed about it. Now, four waves into this campaign,we are annoyed. Really, really annoyed.

Some free advice: You do your cause no service by organizing or participating in such a campaign. It is viewed by me and others with the same scorn reserved for junk mail. Perhaps a bit more.

That said. we do not ask about impeachment because it is not a serious option or a topic of considered discussion--witness the fact that no member of congressional Democratic leadership or any of the serious Democratic presidential candidates in '08 are calling for Bush's impeachment. When it is or they are, we will ask about it in our polls.

Enough, already."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/discussion/2005/12/19/DI2005121900972.html


same clown that put this conservative's pimp poll together:

Bush's Support Jumps After a Long Decline
More Americans Upbeat on Iraq, Economy

By Dan Balz and Richard Morin
Washington Post Staff Writers
Tuesday, December 20, 2005 http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/12/19/AR2005121900924.html?nav=rss_nation/special

you fucking numbnuts asshole!

That was directed at the numbnuts asshole at WP, not the OP. :evilgrin:

If the Dems made serious impeachment demands, I guarantee you, there'd be polls.

"scorn reserved for junk mail."

I hope it's on a par with the scorn for WaPo from people who know the Constitution.

just asking the question puts it into people's minds you see. Iraq/Al Queda/Saddam/Bin Laden. Confused?

Bush impeached? Oh now that you mention it...

Polls are meant to gain public opinion on the isssues of the day, not create the issues of the day. Until someone stands up in Congress and starts calling for impeachment, why should anyone poll on it?

It's not up to the media to get this started. It's up to Democrats.

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he's as much of a leader as anyone there. He stood up for American rights when it wasn't cool, almost lost his life at that bridge. He deserves to be recognized.

"There is no question that the U.S. Congress has impeached presidents for lesser offenses."

That certainly does seem a call for impeachment.

question into an "issue of the day"? I wasn't aware that polls could only be conducted by media organisations on an "issue of the day".

I would have thought that, in a democracy, any issue of public interest would be an appropriate subject of media surveys.

and to say I'm afraid it would become an issue misses the point. The media shouldn't be creating the news, whether it helps us or not.

For the record, I'd love to see the fellow removed from office, tarred, feathered, and catapulted over the propaganda and right into the Potomac. But I've also got these pesky issues about the media creating news stories.

As I said, I'm all for impeachment. But it's up to the Democrats to raise this issue and make it news. That's the job of the politicians, not the media.

The interest of the public covers a whole range of issues spanning many days, even weeks, months and years - such as the war in Iraq.

Neither are the polling organisations creating the story. The story is out there. If it wasn't out there, they wouldn't be able to answer, because they wouldn't know what he was talking about. The public could, in theory, even be against *'s impeachment.

However, if the pollsters were all fanatical Democratic activists, they'd have an awful long way to go to create and traduce the "news of the day", as you put it, to the degree that the neocons do routinely. And as for the neocon polls held every day during the Clinton impeachment fiasco.....well... So, in the circumstances, even if the press were fierce Democratic partisans(!!!!), I think you could reasonably turn the other away and pretend you didn't notice it, don't you?.

Polls and public opinion: The one drives the other, which drives the one, which drives the other . . .

If this fucking piece of shit "editor" is upset he is getting so many requests for an impeachment poll, then he should do his fucking job and see if the public is trying to tell him something.

I agree that polls and public opinions can drive each other in a "chicken or the egg" fashion. That doesn't change the fact that polls -- particularly those taken by news organizations -- should be taken regarding what is actually happening, not what may happen.

the right wing pukes don't read anyway

can now go piss up a rope.

I don't care if you're fucking annoyed - you may want to do polls on the benefits of puppies over kittens but the time is coming when you'll have to pull your head out of your butt and see that the ape in White House is DANGEROUS that this is not a case of he said/she said, the foundations of the republic are in jeopardy and that the stakes have gotten way to high for a inside the beltway nitwit to ignore (as much as you want to). So put your annoyance on the shelf and do your god damned job as a journalist or reporter or what ever you're being paid to do when you aren't at lunch.

People asking him to do his job and justify his six figure annual salary make him mad. And he gets madder still when folks point to the lawlessness of the Bush administration as the ground for impeachment. People apparently don't understand that the only grounds for impeachment anymore (9-11 changed everything) are lying about getting blow jobs. High crimes and misdemeanors are just so passé.

Now, quit bothering him with a bunch of damn facts! He's got a palace party to dress for, and his good powdered wig is still at the cleaners. Away with you hoi polloi!

Dumb b@st@rd doen't realize that there will be more than one repub calling for impeachment as well. Bite me Moran

...going back to Clinton impeachment.

Wouldn't it be lovely to shove that in their faces?

resolutions that were submitted to day to Congress?

Why can't he just answer the question.

Is he afraid of what the answer might be?

:shrug:

They flapped and squawked and cheerfully tossed around the term "impeachment" when SEX was involved.

Now we have a person in the White House declaring himself above the Law of the Land - openly and ruthlessly abridging the rights of the people who employ his sorry ass - and suddenly "impeachment" is a delicate word?

My, my, my. The media truly are a bunch of whiney-assed, insipid worms.

Scumbag. Just because you respond to information you find at a certain web site doesn't mean you don't believe what you're writing.

Scumbag. Just because no member of congress has brought up impeachment doesn't mean the people aren't talking about it and that it needs to be POLLED.

SCUMBAG.

LIfe is hell
Best to immitate an ostrich

And you don't always get a good cross of people from different areas of the country.

that's the point behind asking why the editor won't ask the obvious political question buzzing around the nation. his answer is a good illustration of the bias in the polls he runs and interprets.

Here's his e-mail:

morinr@washpost.com

Let 'em have it!!!

I will!!

I sent him a lovely message.

Maybe some people should be cc'd.

Leonard Downie, publisher.

(e-mails infuriate him, too.)

when it comes to Jr. It is not his business to cover reality or respond to YOUR commoner wishes.


''We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And
while you're studying that reality -- judiciously, as you will -- we'll
act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and
that's how things will sort out. We're history's actors . . . and you,
all of you, will be left to just study what we do.''
Bush aide to Ron Suskind

Now I know why I didn't believe the 'Bush jumps in the polls' nonsense, but rather paid attention to what REAL people were saying!

Another paid propagandist is all he is. He surely has revealed his 'partisanship'. Who would believe anything our so-called press has to say anymore? Bush calls the NYT editors to try to kill his impeachable behavior story, and this jerk doesn't get why the 'I' word is being thrown around?

Even Conservatives are acknowledging the fact that this may be impeachable.

Btw, I guess Conyers' is not an elected official? I think someone needs to tell this jerk that we don't care whether he's mad or not. WE ARE MAD about what is happening to this country and I think, we outnumber him and his ilk at this point.

that the integrity of his news outlet has ALREADY been publicly impeached. The circular reasoning of the self-justified power propagandist is simply disgusting, not a rational positional. I reciprocate his emotional response(mad) with another(disdain). They will be lucky anyone goes to their site to see if they even have a poll and then think it is worth responding to.

Just exactly what importance and impartiality do they claim for their "unscientific" polling anyway? This is an admission it is not about taking the public pulse but being a Madison Avenue ploy for the the establishment they should be critiquing.

Now that you have exposed yourself as being an illegitamit pollster!!!

Lets see......Maybe the Washington Post Editors will get the message to fire your ass!!!

Time to fax the post 24/7 DUrs!!!

Related issues, that involve Clenis tracks on a dress.

Thinking of such sexual acts by a President may get Mr. Morin 'hot & bothered' and compel him to jerk-off, to release some sexual pressure. Then, Mr. Morin may belt out the word "Impeach!" at the moment he ejaculates. Maybe a sexual dysfunction has Mr. Morin confused about the word impeach, and he is angered by his own embarrassment, when people keep repeating that nasty "i" word to him.

houses.

Whether something has been raised by a legislator should not determine whether it is worth polling about.

And finally, as another letter writer to WaPo put it after the ombudsperson made a similarly insipid point about disregarding (or getting angry about) multiple emails on a given point, "do I have to write in crayon to be taken seriously?"

http://mediamatters.org/items/200512200006

snip

The Post first reported the Lewinsky story on January 21, 1998. The newspaper began polling on the question of whether the public would support impeachment just two days later, on January 23 -- hardly long enough for the "considered discussion" Morin now says is a prerequisite for asking about impeachment.

Nowhere in Morin's new explanation does he claim that a question about impeachment would be "biased" or "would produce a misleading result," as Howell says Morin originally told her. Further, his new claim that the Post does not ask about impeachment because "no member of congressional Democratic leadership or any of the serious Democratic presidential candidates" are calling for it does not ring true. After all, one recent Post poll asked, "Should all U.S. forces in Iraq be withdrawn immediately, or should they be decreased, but not all withdrawn immediately" -- despite the fact that no member of the congressional Democratic leadership has called for the immediate withdrawal of all U.S. forces from Iraq. Finally, Morin's statement that impeachment is not "a topic of considered discussion" seems to be at odds with the findings of other polls showing that the majority of Americans think Bush should be impeached if he lied about Iraq.

At the end of his chat, Morin posted a question (submitted by Media Matters staff) that raised the inconsistency between his comments to Howell and the Post's prior actions. Morin did not respond to the question:

snip

<snip>

that almost everyone I know wishes impeachment was on the table.
Polls are about what people are thinking, correct? People do not need politician's permission to have an opinion. Just ask them.

in her appearance on Olbermann.

I wish he and the "ombudsman" (who hardly behaves like one--and I should know; I chair a faculty advisory committee to an ombudsman at a top university!!) would simply state the truth.

At a minimum that would be:

"We don't ask because we DON'T WANNA and you can't make us."

... so live with it!

... so live with it!

Thousands of people are discussing it, damned seriously. They can't get heard because media people like this incompetent clod aren't doing their jobs. Fire this bozo, and then we'll see what topics are being seriously discussed.