Why the Online Hatred of Hillary on the Left?

As a reader of blogs, I have been sruck by the fact that so many of Obama supporters seem to despise Hillary Clinton just as much as George W. Bush. Indeed, many put her in the same category. This, of course, doesn't seem to make sense.

No one can say that had Hillary Clinton been president in 2003 that the Iraq War would have taken place. Indeed, while her husband seemed to have supported Bush's war, it should be noted that for eight years Bill Clinton had resisted pressure to go after Saddam Hussein from neo-cons.

Or take the expansion of the State Child Health Insurance Program. Does anyone on the left think that Hillary Clinton would have opposed such an expansion?

Or take United States Supreme Court nominations. Does anyone on the left think that Hillary Clinton would have nominated Supreme Court Justices in the mold of Roberts or Alito?

So where does this attitude about Clinton come from? I believe that it comes from the fact that she supported the Resolution for the Authorization of the Use of Force and refuses to say that she made a wrong decision in voting for the Resolution.

Now, she didn't have to vote for the Resolution. She could have joined Democrats like Ohio's Senator Sherrod Brown and voted against the Resolution and taken the political heat. Indeed, since she wasn't going to be on the ballot for re-election until 2006, she would have had four years between her vote and her re-election campaign. Contrast that with Representatives like Sherrod who had to run in 2004.

Further, her explanation that she thought that Bush would use the Resolution to continue to pressure Hussein and to work with the U.N. doesn't make any sense. By 2003 it was obvious to anyone who was paying attention that Bush governed from a sense of entitlement and what the rest of the world thought about him just didn't matter. As he famously said, "I know what I believe, and I believe that what I believe is right." Not exactly the words of someone who is willing to listen to others.

There is the reasonable suspicion that she voted for the Resolution not because she supported it but because she wanted to make sure she wouldn't be attacked from the right as weak on defense if and when she ran for president. She seemed to take the left for granted, assuming that liberals would have to back her for president if she ran because there would be no realistic alternative.

No one likes being taken for granted, especially when, as it turns out, they were right about the war. It is aggravating to people who opposed the war from the start to see that they were right and then to have Clinton stubbornly refuse to acknowledge that she was wrong.

What has changed since 2003 is the rise of the Internet as a way of organizing politically and of raising political money. Further, she was, at is now obvious, wrong about the Left not having an alternative.

Because of her vote in 2003, everything she does is now seen as the result of poltical calculation and not principle. It is sad for those who think that Clinton has a lot to offer America, and it could be the death blow to her presidential ambitions.