What is "negative campaigning"?

Obama has been pointing out the differences between himself and Clinton on various issues. How does this constitute "negative campaigning"?

There are certainly degrees to it.

Negative campaigning is not necessarily mud slinging.

identified with mud slinging. I would expect a lot of negative campaigning come the general election; I would be shocked if the Democratic candidate goes around telling people what a great job the Republicans have done the last 8 years!

Its part of the game. The frontrunner plays nice while those trailing walk a tight rope of what is criticism and what is mud slinging.

But the real nasty negative campaigning is stuff we don't see like push polling.

I think "negative" campaigning is the lie and distort model.
Everything else, to me, is just campaigning.

I still see it as a matter of degrees.

there is a huge degree of difference on the "distort" continuim...

If you want negative think "Willie Horton" or the entire Kerry Healey run for Governor of Mass last year. :)

:shrug:

attacks, pointing out a difference in policy is not negative.

In VA they have some appalling state delegate ads on TV right now that help me maintain perspective on what negative means.

of going negative, is that a form of mud slinging?

what's positive about yourself.

It's a good thing. Otherwise the best we would get is subtle hints about why Candidate M may have some problems. We'd only get the best face from each candidate, unless newspapers were allowed to dig.

Take the entire Iraq War Resolution business. Pointing out that somebody voted for it would be negative campaigning. Not mud slinging. And I think it's something that should be pointed out. Same for SCHIP voting, or any other position on a substantive issue that isn't necessarily what a candidate thinks the target audience wants to agree with.

Without either negative reporting or negative campaigning, such things would be off limits. You might have Candidate L saying, "I did not vote for the IWR", but that would be about the end of it. If nobody else says one way or the other, that candidate would either have to go negative, or jump up and down waiting for people to get what's *really* being said: "I said **I** didn't vote for the IWR, you damned fools, why don't you force the others to say if they did or check Thomas!?!"

Negative campaigning is also useful for having one candidate's research team point out flaws in another candidate's proposals. Don't like Biden's education plan, fine, say what you don't like about it. Oops ... that's negative. "Positive" would only involve Biden saying how good it is, possibly with an accompanying chorus.

I like negative campaigning because it raises more substantive issues and clarifies differences between candidates more than any other kind. Mud-slinging, an extreme form, does little to clarify issues or candidates' views, and is usually best described as ad hominem or sensationalist (or false, a different kettle of worms). Purely positive campaigning is mostly fluff, or not readily distinguishable from fluff.