Some Democrats use every trick in the book too:

http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/05/29/obamas.first.campaign...

In his first race for office, seeking a state Senate seat on Chicago's gritty South Side in 1996, Obama effectively used election rules to eliminate his Democratic competition.

As a community organizer, he had helped register thousands of voters. But when it came time to run for office, he employed Chicago rules to invalidate the voting petition signatures of three of his challengers.

The move denied each of them, including incumbent Alice Palmer, a longtime Chicago activist, a place on the ballot. It cleared the way for Obama to run unopposed on the Democratic ticket in a heavily Democrat district.

In JFK's first primary election one of his opponents was one Joseph Russo. JFK's father Joe hired another guy named Joseph Russo to run and split the vote. Dirty trick but it didn't end up mattering as the two Russos combined would not have defeated JFK.

I don't feel like what happened in the 1960s is the most salient thing to consider when you take into account that the effort to suppress the vote has been overwhelmingly Republican in the past few decades and has picked up with the Supreme Court striking down parts of the Voting Rights Acts.

never said it was the "most salient thing to consider." It's an interesting historical anecdote.

His dad apparently made a few powerful enemies: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T-EBGYF8XLQ

"that makes him smart"

Indeed it does. Although to be fair, he probably didn't know about it until he read about it in the paper.