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How is that kind of name-calling positive?

The minute you start insisting your opponents are angry hate- and fear-mongers preaching the politics of division, you have descended into negativity.

Of course, our all-positive, all-the-time NDP campaigners have also launched not one, but three anti-Kenney websites that are full of nothing but slurs against the UCP leader’s character.

And this week, the NDP also premiered a 10-minute video of decades-old Kenney remarks about same-sex marriage (remarks Kenney has on many occasions insisted he no longer agrees with) followed by interviews with people from San Francisco (where Kenney made the remarks) urging Albertans not to vote UCP.

You might agree with the NDP that bringing up remarks from Kenney’s distant past is necessary, that voters need to know some of the socially conservative positions the former federal cabinet minister held when he was a university student. Fair enough.

But you cannot claim such personal attacks are positive.

For his part, Kenney thinks the “U.S.-style attack politics” being employed by the NDP, shows how desperate that party truly is. Kenney says the NDP is not running on fumes, rather “it has run out of fumes.”

We agree.

Occasionally, NDP Leader Rachel Notley or one of her candidates tries to insist Alberta’s economy is improving despite all the evidence to the contrary (like a rising unemployment rate, stagnant private-sector wages, slumping housing and vehicles sales and massive flight of investment capital to business-friendlier jurisdictions.)

This week, Notley even tried to convince voters – again – that “we are closer than ever to getting the [Trans Mountain] pipeline built.”

All the negative attacks by the NDP are likely to backfire on them as the campaign unfolds and voters see Kenney is not the demon the New Dems claim. When voters see the UCP leaders is capable and intelligent, NDP credibility will take a big hit.

Yet despite the risk, we suppose the NDP had to go negative early (and hard) because there is so little that is positive from their four years in office.