If the public is so sick of negative campaigning, so ready to punish the mudslingers, then why are those tactics used again and again, election after election? Because they usually work. At least in the short run, a candidate can gain some advantage by calling his opponent's character into question. Except when it has the opposite effect.

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In a fight for the Democratic nomination that quickly came to feel like the siege of Stalingrad, we saw both results. And Anne Kornblut, a veteran political reporter for the Washington Post, thinks there's an important lesson here: Negative attacks can work as long as they don't undermine the core basis of your ...

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