To add onto Matt's comments on Hillary hatred, I was at a political dinner last night and ended up chatting with an older woman who's very big in Republican circles, was high-up in the Bush 2000 campaign, etc. She's furious at the GOP for abandoning everything she ever believed in and making a mockery of her life's work. The only way she'd vote for a Republican, she said, is if the Democrats nominate Hillary. "Anything to keep that woman out!" Somewhat predictably, she was supporting Obama.
This is, I gather, the Andrew Sullivan approach, too. But I don't really get it. I realize I'm a bit overly wonkish, and not everything can be boiled to policy proposals, but Hillary and Obama aren't that far apart in ideology. Their likely administrations probably wouldn't be that different. If you're a serious dove on foreign policy, I can see a stronger preference of Obama. If you're interested in a transformative presidency that inaugurates a new progressive era, I can also see placing that bet on Obama. If you're really worried about executive competence, I can imagine going with Clinton. But it's really not clear to me what is drawing disaffected, elite Republicans to Barack. His rhetoric is, I guess, pretty non-threatening, but so was Bill Clinton's when he was breaking the Democratic Party of its 80s orthodoxies, and these very same people went to war against him.
