Who started that nonsense - those voters are this or that?
In the US, at least, things got a whole less classy in the Trump/Hillary cycle.
Hillary had her famous "Basket of Deplorables" moment, which probably lost her the election:
"You know, to just be grossly generalistic, you could put half of Trump's supporters into what I call the basket of deplorables. (Laughter/applause) Right? (Laughter/applause) They're racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamophobic - you name it.
And unfortunately, there are people like that. And he has lifted them up. He has given voice to their websites that used to only have 11,000 people - now have 11 million. He tweets and retweets their offensive hateful mean-spirited rhetoric.
Now, some of those folks - they are irredeemable, but thankfully, they are not America."I don't know what on God's green earth had compelled Hillary to say this out loud, but she was channeling what a lot of people in her party were thinking.
Previously candidates would stop short of throwing these kind of fire bombs, and still pretended at least to try to be "President of all Americans".
Trump was a good boy too, and would lead a chant of "Lock Her Up!" during many of his rallies. This was like crack cocaine to his electorate. All sorts of animal instincts were unleashed.
Contrast this to McCain's correction, when a woman at a town hall called Obama a Muslim (as if that's an indictment):
"No, ma'am. He's a decent family man, citizen, that I just happen to have disagreements with on fundamental issues, and that's what this campaign is all about".This was highly classy, and made everyone respect John McCain much more. Maybe he would have beat Obama in the election, had he had thrown more napalm and used more corrosive speech, or didn't recruit a semi-literate retard as VP. But he didn't. He kept his good name, and didn't set American against American - even if it served his selfish interest.