All's not fair in politics, in fact

Nor is it in love and war, but it's in the fight for voting rights that we must stand up

There’s wisdom for almost any occasion in Shakespeare — or in words people think were his.

That guy William Shakespeare gave us a lot of phrases that now come trippingly to the tongue — see what I did there? — but he often gets credit for a line that was not his: “All’s fair in love and war,” to which some folks now add, “and politics.” The attribution to Shakespeare is wrong, as is any countenancing of politics as a no-holds-barred brawl.

We will give due credit to the author of the original phrase in a moment, but it’s worth noting first the awful condition of American public life that now confronts us, where one of our major parties is building its campaign on a fundamental lie and trying to gain power by inhibiting democracy — which by any code is clearly immoral.

I’m sorry if this sounds overtly partisan. I’m not a member of a political party, though I am a progressive, and I hope that if Democrats were doing what Republicans are these days, I’d call them out just as clearly. Right …