In 2008, people didn't demonstrate or burn garbage cans because McCain refused to run a racist campaign because that had been done to him by Bush+Rove in 2000.

This was why McCain lost South Carolina. McCain has an adopted Bangladeshi daughter, Bridget, and the Bush people ran a whisper campaign that she was black as if that mattered but it did in South Carolina.

So in 2008, McCain instead ran pretty much straight up against Obama and since that essentially meant running as a third Bush term, he got buried.

Romney ran a pretty clean campaign only obliquely mentioning the Birther nonsense.

I don't even have to tell you what kind of campaign Trump ran since you just lived through it.