The Times' John Harwood wrote up a rather breathless article earlier this week about how Democrats were going to have to run mean, “nasty” campaigns in order to fend off a Republican surge. But I didn't see much evidence to support the claim. Instead, It seems to me the Beltway press routinely maintains a double standard for political hardball. Namely, when Republicans play it, it's savvy and super-smart, but when Democrats try to play, it's unsightly and the cause of much hand wringing. (What happened to the issues???)

Harwood's article played right into the narrative, mostly because the proof of Democrats pursuing a “winning ugly” was comically thin. Meaning, if Republicans had done what the Democrats referenced in the article recently did on the campaign trail, nobody in the press would have said boo. But because Democrats supposedly threw some elbows (emphasis on the supposedly), it was a very big deal.

What have those “nasty” campaign tactics consisted of? From the Times [emphasis added]:

In Virginia's off-year governor's race, the Democratic candidate, R. Creigh Deeds, has homed in on an old academic paper by his Republican opponent, Robert F. McDonnell, to cast Mr. McDonnell as a right-wing radical on social issues...

Mr. Corzine has made more headway — and gotten even more personal — in New Jersey's close race for governor. He has mocked his heavy-set Republican opponent, Christopher J. Christie, in an advertisement that claimed Mr. Christie “threw his weight around” to avoid traffic tickets.

Really? That's it? (And what ever happened to it-takes-three-to-make-a-trend newsroom rule.) I always connected “winning ugly” with viciously smearing the opponent, or openly lying about their record. But at the Times, the pedestrian campaign incidents noted above are what constitute Democratic efforts at “winning ugly.” That's what passes for being “nasty” when the topic is Democratic hardball.