With this video on how political candidates used to talk about each other 200 years ago (via Dave Weigel):
At the same time, it's worth remembering that, despite the flagrant racism of some of this season's campaign ads, and the disturbing number of recent instances involving right-wing threats and violence, all of these things are actually less OK today than they've ever been. There was a time, after all, when you couldn't get a filibuster-proof majority to end ritual mob killings of black people because the Ku Klux Klan was a constituency the Democratic Party didn't want to offend.
