The Democratic debate in Wisconsin presented a fascinating contrast of two very different approaches for conducting a political campaign.

One candidate focused on presenting ideas and positions for the voters to evaluate. The other candidate focused on destroying the opponent.

Bernie Sanders attempted to spend his allotted time on explaining his views directly, openly, and honestly about the most important issues confronting our society and how he would seek to solve them. But he was repeatedly knocked off track and was forced to spend much of his time responding to attacks and mischaracterizations against him. He did not attempt to distort the positions of his opponent.

Hillary Clinton, on the other hand, put on a masterful display of the dark art of politics. The issues she presented were selected not due to their importance to our society or to voters. Instead, she focused on issues that were carefully designed to magnify and exploit the political vulnerabilities of her opponent. And she has no ethical compunctions whatsoever about shamefully mischaracterizing her opponent in order to score political points for herself.

These differences were framed right at the beginning of the debate in the opening statements. Bernie described how the central issue facing our society today is how the wealthy class now disproportionately controls our entire system through political contributions, and this results in harming ordinary people in the middle and lower classes.

In Hillary's opening statement, she appealed directly to African Americans, immigrants, and women. This was no accident. She didn't just pull this out of a hat.

Instead, this reflects a very shrewd political calculation. Hillary is seeking to exploit Bernie's weakness with African Americans as the campaign heads into the South Carolina primary elections that will include a large population of African American voters, and Bernie's weakness with immigrants as the campaign heads into the Nevada caucuses that will include a large population of immigrant voters. And Hillary is also seeking to undermine Bernie's success with women voters. So we see that lurking behind every statement from Hillary lies some sort of a calculated political motive.

Throughout the entire debate, Hillary repeatedly tried to associate herself with President Barack Obama. It was rather humorous, actually. Example after example, over and over again, Hillary presented herself as being aligned with Obama.

She mentioned that a super PAC that had previously supported Obama now desires to support her. She said she was proud that Obama listened to her advice on greenlighting the operation that killed Osama bin Laden. She praised Obama for supporting causes that benefit African Americans. She said that both she and Obama enjoy support from small donors, dubiously elevating her level of grassroots support to that of Obama. And she repeated her common line that Obama trusted her enough to appoint her as secretary of state.

In perhaps the most shameless example of coopting Obama for her own political purposes, when Hillary is questioned about the vast sums of money she has raised from Wall Street, her answer is that Obama also raised money from Wall Street. The problem with this is that it doesn't make it right. But no matter.

Hillary's little device of associating herself with Obama was no coincidence. It was another shrewd political calculation. Hillary is seeking to exploit the vote of African Americans. Obama is extremely popular among African Americans, so Hillary is trying to appeal to these voters by implying that she is the candidate who is most closely aligned with Obama, and thus African Americans should all vote for her over Bernie.

Hillary didn't stop there. She went even further and underhandedly tried to turn African Americans against Bernie by falsely claiming that Bernie is opposed to Obama.

In what was the absolute low-point of the entire debate, and possibly of the entire Democratic campaign, Hillary blasted Bernie for calling Obama "weak" and "a disappointment." She went on to say that Bernie's criticism "about our President I expect from Republicans, I do not expect from someone running for the Democratic nomination to succeed President Obama."

A stunned Bernie responded appropriately. "Madam Secretary," he said, "that is a low blow."

But the damage had been done. Bernie was then forced to defend his long history of being a staunch supporter of Obama. And he explained that his criticism of Obama was merely a healthy exercise of democracy. Bernie did manage to slip-in the rather humorous point that, in fact, it was Hillary who had run against Obama and tried to prevent Obama from ever becoming president in the first place.

Nonetheless, Hillary's political ruthlessness is on full display here in her effort to smear Bernie in the eyes of the critical voting block of African Americans.

In another example of Hillary's political shrewdness, she kept repeating that it was important for the candidates to "level" with the American people, and that they should not make promises they could not keep. Then Hillary would talk about the costliness of Bernie's proposals, like healthcare and free college tuition.

She was essentially accusing Bernie of lying about the costs and feasibility of his proposals. She, on the other hand, said that she would not wish to throw the nation into debt. She said that Bernie's proposals would expand the size of the federal government by 40 percent. Ouch. Bernie was again forced back on his heels to explain that all of his proposals are paid for.

Bernie managed to make the great point on healthcare that other large countries around the world pay less for healthcare and provide better service, so we in America could do this as well. The problem in America, he explained, is tied to his central campaign theme that large corporations use their political influence to block meaningful reform. But Hillary had already cunningly cast a cloud over Bernie's proposals.

Hillary also maligned Bernie for voting against an immigration bill in 2007, thereby creating the misleading impression that Bernie was against immigrants. This again was no accident. Hillary was shrewdly smearing Bernie in the eyes of immigrants on the eve of the Nevada caucuses where immigrant voters are numerous and the issues surrounding immigration loom large.

Again, Bernie was back on his heels defending himself. He explained that the reason he voted against the bill is because it was bad for immigrants. Many immigrant rights groups, Latino rights groups, and progressive groups also opposed the bill. So by voting against it, he was in fact voting in favor of immigrants. But this is a bit confusing, so Hillary still landed the blow, even if it was below the belt.

So which candidate should voters prefer? The candidate who is more sincere about important issues and solutions? Or the candidate who is better at underhanded political attacks?

If we fall for political manipulators in elections, then our government will be filled with nothing more than political manipulators and we will be very dissatisfied with the actual performance of government.

Hm. That explains a lot.