I hope the Republicans are proud of themselves. They have phony gay-rights activists trying to dissuade Florida voters from voting for Kerry and they're making phony calls to Michigan voters describing Kerry as an advocate of gay marriage.

Democrats had to develop a sophisticated level of attack-and-response politics to prevent 1988 from happening again; Democrats and liberal 527s have had to create hardcore advertising to counter the vicious nonsense being spewed by the GOP and its sympathizers. Eventually, Democrats might just have to start playing as many dirty tricks as Republicans.

It wouldn't be hard to create plausible-sounding phone calls that urge a GOP vote in order to keep America a Christian nation -- and then target those calls to undecided Jewish voters in swing states. It wouldn't be hard to create phone calls that praise the Republican Party as the bulwark against "greedy labor unions" -- and aim them at Michigan and West Virginia. And it wouldn't be hard to portray GOP candidates as people who understand that God wants men to be the masters of the household and women to submit to them -- calls that could be aimed at voters well outside the Bible Belt.

This is the sleaziest campaign we've ever lived through, but it may not be the sleaziest campaign we'll ever live through -- and if things do get worse, Republicans will be to blame.