Liberals have seen the enemy, and he is John Cummins

Note: Saturday updates at end of post.

I don't know anything about professional politics, although I have some experience in the corporate kind.

Maybe the Liberals' sleazy attacks on John Cummins are just the way you win.

After all, the federal Conservatives' attacks on Stephane Dion and Michael Ignatieff seemed to work. American politicians and their handlers have great success with attack ads.

So Christy Clark has adopted the same approach. Find a way to portray other leaders as creepy, amoral, sinister figures, buy some ads and stick up some grisly photos to show them in their worst light. Make them not just people with bad policies, but evil, perhaps deranged or stupid, princes of darkness.

Use the attacks to solidify your base, as they say, and raise money.

The smear campaigns don't seem to make voters think you're desperate or fearful, or at least not often. Though it does seem odd that the Liberal party is buying radio commercials to attack a politician most British Columbians haven't likely heard of.

But couldn't parties win by arguing their opponents' policies were dumb or destructive, without vilifying them on a personal level or making up motivations for their actions and policies?

That would be a lot less damaging for democracy and public life.

If this kind of stuff works, it says something sad about us as voters.

Saturday updates:

Les Leyne has a good column in the Times Colonist on just how wretched and fake these attack ads are.
And the Gazetteer calls for a much stronger denunciation of a style of sleazy, destructive politics that threatens democracy itself. You should read him here.