The author misconceives the excitement in 2008 for Obama with some "authentic" ability in that candidate. He can deliver a speech very well and, contrary to conventional wisdom on these threads, he speaks well contemporaneously but it was not Obama's soaring rhetoric, not his ideas which were vapid (hope and change) but the color of his skin and his opposition to the war in Iraq which made leftists' hearts pound.
Both his color and his opposition to the war vindicated everything leftists stand for. Obama was the walking embodiment of their rationalization for existence and persistence in socialist nostrums which simply do not work: Republicans are racists and they are not.
Obama's opposition to the war, in contrast to Hillary's support for the war along with the support of the entire Democrat establishment excepting Ted Kennedy who endorsed Obama, served as absolution to the left for its mortal sin of initially supporting George Bush's war. That sin was compounded by the fact that the establishment's initial support for the war was cynical and calculated in the extreme, they, Hillary foremost among them, had been caught on the wrong side of the first Gulf war and would not make the same political misstep again.
Hillary obviously does not enjoy the same blind support of the media that twice put Obama into the Oval Office. It may even be that many elements of the establishment media will feel that they must vindicate themselves by exposing some of the more egregious excesses of Clinton, Inc. In other words, the same psychology which affects leftist voters will also affect leftist journalists. There is a palpable need for redemption in the fourth estate.
With every passing day, it becomes clearer and clearer that we conservatives must understand The "intellectual" Left as opposed to ethnic voting blocs is not so much a political movement but an emotional and psychological phenomenon which must be dealt with at that level.
