Subject: Re: More on the Arlington Cemetery incident
You've got to be talking about what for some folks is ancient history. My recollection of the last significant positive partisanship has to have been around the Reagan era. The 1980 campaign was mostly about Carter. Carter talked about himself positively (when he was doing the little bit of campaigning he did - he was mostly working on getting the hostages home), and Reagan talked about Carter negatively. That's going to pre-date the memories of a good number of posters here.

Negative partisanship isn't the same thing as negative campaigning.

Positive and negative partisanship are explanations for why partisan voters hold the preferences they have. Positive partisans prefer their party because they like their party; negative partisans prefer their party because they dislike the other party.

Neither forecloses using negative campaigning.