The New York Times reports that Mary Peltola, the Democratic candidate for Senator from Alaska, pulled a dirty trick. Her campaign sought out a person with the same name as the incumbent Republican Senator, convinced him to run as a Republican, supported his candidacy, and, most importantly, lied about it.

The Peltola campaign has repeatedly denied any involvement in his candidacy. But The Times has found, based on interviews and text messages, along with documents prepared for a potential lawsuit against the campaign, that not only did Ms. Peltola’s team work with people trying to recruit Mr. Sullivan to run for Senate, but the effort was much broader. The group worked to coax other would-be spoilers into the race, to dilute the incumbent’s support and help catapult the Democrat to victory.

Unsurprisingly, Trump demanded she resign from the race and called for her to be criminally prosecuted, not that he could point to any crime committed. Thus far, no one has pointed to any plausible crime, but it certainly falls within the dirty trick ambit. As Vance is fond of saying, politics is dirty business, but then, since when is Vance the arbiter of propriety?

Democrats immediately pointed to the myriad dirty tricks and lies, which have happened with both far greater frequency, and far worse, than this. “Whataboutism” is no less fallacious when done by Democrats than Republicans. As for the Republicans, the pearl clutching was stunning. The rank hypocrisy of embracing Trump’s lies and dirty tricks while condemning Peltola’s broke the irony meter.

But that doesn’t make Peltola’s conduct either the end of the world or acceptable. If she did what she’s accused of doing, and it certainly appears that she was well aware that her campaign introduced a spoiler to siphon votes away from the incumbent and then she lied about it, its wrongfulness stands alone and warrants scrutiny. In the grand scheme of this election, it doesn’t mean Senator Dan Sullivan is the better choice. After all, he remains part of the MAGA machine, backing Trump’s pathological lying, corruption and violations of the Constitution. Sullivan doesn’t come to this election clean.

The Democrats, nonetheless, have to squarely face the reality that their one and only claim to take the Congress is that they are not Trump. You cannot simultaneously wrap yourself in virtue to distinguish yourself from the most venal and corrupt person to ever darken the Oval Office and engage in dirty tricks, then lie about it. No, it was not the dirtiest of tricks. No, it was not the worst of lies, paling in comparison to Trump’s routine stump speech content. But it was still a lie.

There is a cohort in the Democratic Party that applauds Peltola’s action. They argue that the Reps have played dirty, very dirty, for years, and so it’s time that the Dems play dirty as well. We teach children that two wrongs don’t make a right, and yet they share the Trumpian view that anything that achieves their desired end is justified. The ends do not justify the means. The means are what distinguishes good and decent people from their adversaries. Peltola did not honor that distinction.

Politics can be a very ugly business, trying to promote a candidate whose accomplishments, abilities or intentions fall far short of what they want the voters to believe, and denigrate their adversaries for things that are twisted beyond truth to turn supporters away. There are a lot of lies. There are a great many distortions. There is rampant dishonesty. It is not for the faint-hearted.

None of this excuses what happened here. Yes, it pales in comparison to what the Republicans have done, both in terms of awful but not illegal dirty tricks and lies. Mary Peltola has now been branded a liar. This changes the question of whether to vote for the virtuous candidate or the MAGA sycophant, with all that implies, to whether to vote for the lying trickster or the MAGA sycophant.

The shame of it all is that Peltola didn’t need to engage in this ploy to have a real chance of prevailing, given the unpopularity of Trump and the consequences of his vast array of failures. But here we are.