My entire point is that these tactics being deployed by anyone merely contributes to the perceived moral bankruptcy of all politicians, not just in the US Republican and Democratic parties, but their equivalents here in the UK and elsewhere.

I am a rarity in my age demographic, because I actually bother to vote, although I frequently wonder why I bother. Because when I ask my peers why they don’t, the answer they give me is one that rings in my own mind when I think about it: “There’s nothing to choose between.”

When I see a political movement or party that decides, in a radical and almost unprecedented move, to focus on primarily discussing themselves and their own ideas in a positive light and to leave the opposition to dig their own hole, I’ll see the first party that I will consider examining in detail as worthy of my support. In the meantime, I will continue to vote tactically in the hope that my small contribution will in some way fend off what sometimes feels like an inexorable slide into corporate feudalism with fascist undertones.

Your mileage, of course, may vary.

If they’re not taking things out of context, they’re not ‘smearing.’ But the fact that anybody can make an ad means there will lots of detritus up there that would count as smearing. Let’s hope whoever chooses the ads can filter them out.