The following is an history lesson fro you and others who may not know the following......
So you think that name calling and worse are something "new"?
Well Thomas Jefferson was one of THE worst of the worst, vilest proponents of it and it didn't stop with him. He went after President Washington, during his second term and had a long, very heated and nasty set to with John Adams; calling Adams an HERMAPHRODITE!
And before you think that this stuff didn't spread because there was no internet....THINK AGAIN!
Back then there were broadsheets ( something akin to flyers ) that got tacked up on lamp posts, building, handed around. Jefferson and the men he paid/promised jobs to wrote nasty bits in letters to the editors, articles, and such that were distributed to every newspaper in our new nation.
Jefferson signed his name to some, but also used pseudonyms and sometimes no name at all. This was also done by his paid henchmen. And when his most active and ardent follower/henchman didn't get what he was promised, he spread the whole FALSE thing about old Tom having sexual relations his dead wife's mulatto 1/2 sister, Sally Hemmings.
The whole "whispering campaign" was begun the and has continued throughout our history!
When Andy Jackson ran for president, the Whigs ( GOP now ) taunted him and his wife with claims of bigamy, that she was "trash who smoked a pipe" ( also implying that she was uneducated, a whore, and and a drunken adulteress.
When Ike was running for president, for reelection, the Dems ( the DNC actually, in campaign literature! ) began a whispering campaign stating that Mamie was a "CLOSET DRUNK"!
These are but a few paltry examples of the "blood game" of politics, which has NEVER been 1) civil 2) respectful nor 3) in any way "polite"!
A blood sport indeed.