In an era when the latest radio ad a candidate broadcasts can get more listens on the web than over the airways, when everyone is connected by blogs and sites like this, chock full of constantly updated news, everything can be spun to look sleazy. But this year is nothing new: Candidates poll, and they don't always poll their own positive ratings. The only difference is that now, we all know when and where they're polling, and from that information we can gather just what kind of poll they're conducting.

Consider this LA Times report, in which retiree Ed Coghlan, who used to direct news for a local television station in California, received a call from a pollster asking questions about the three leading Democrats (before John Edwards dropped out) and John McCain. Every question asked about Clinton was positive, while many questions about the other candidates were generally negative.

The call was clearly a push poll, right? Not at all. The survey lasted 20 minutes, far too long to be effective in reaching a wide number of voters in time for that state's massive primary. That it was a Clinton poll is in little doubt, and it shouldn't be viewed as malicious. Candidates on all sides need to know the most effective arguments for their own candidacies and against their opponents. Politics is, after all, a zero-sum game: If Barack Obama or Clinton get more than 50% of the vote in a poll, their opponent cannot win by building his or her vote total; they have to take votes away from the other candidate.

Obama's camp has not, as far as we've seen, responded to this poll, and they shouldn't. One of their great lines, that Obama is running a different kind of campaign, is a little misleading: Obama is doing well, some might say leading the Democratic race, precisely because he is running a normal campaign better than Clinton is. It is certain that his campaign has conducted similar polls; how else could they explain their effective use of messages against Clinton? Further, by not reacting to every perceived insult, Obama's team stays on their message and on their game.

But, in this day of constant twists and turns, when literally thousands of media outlets, both new and old, are chasing every angle of every story possible, everything starts to look sinister. No matter how perfect someone's preferred candidate looks, if they're still in the race they're doing something right, and polling an opponent's flaws is an important part of a winning campaign.

Every report of a push poll, in short, needs to be taken with two grains of salt: First, remember that these campaigns, and the outside groups trying to influence them, are run by political professionals whose first job is to win. Second, their methods aren't always underhanded, and not every call that asks about someone else's negatives should be met with a righteous outcry.