20/20 had a story on the morally questionable tactics being used right now. The biggest thing that impressed me is the use of "pushing polls." Pushing polls are basically when people are called anonomously and given leading and/or false info to push them away from a particular candidate- but it's all done under the guise of a neutral poll. For ex, someone might call and say, "John Edwards has done X bad thing- does that affect how you think of him?" X might be a gross exaggeration, a skewed interpretation or an outright lie. All the democratic candidates were hit except Hilary Clinton- which naturally suggests either her campaign or at least her supporter is behind it.
One of the worst examples of the pushing poll was back when Bush was running against McCain. McCain was leading in a certain southern state, so the Bush campaign resorted to the pushing poll. McCain has an adopted daughter from Banglesdesh; the child is dark-skinned. The Bush campaign spread the possibility that she was actually an illegitimate black daughter, and so in their pushing polls, asked if McCain's illegitimate black daughter would affect their vote. In the race conscious south, it did, and McCain plummeted in that state (see http://www.boston.com/news/globe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2004/03/21/the_anatomy_of_a_smear_campaign/).
The 20/20 story also mentioned "opposition researchers," whose whole job it is to dig up not necessarily dirt, but anything that can be skewed to be interpreted as dirt.
Lastly, the story discussed the dirtiest journalism I've ever heard of: a member of a party digs up potentially derailing info and calls up a newspaper, making the deal that the source of the info is not to be revealed. This makes the newspaper's presentation out to be legit and nobody knows a rival candidate is behind it.
So far, Obama is the only candidate who hasn't been committing any of these dirty politics tactics.
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