There’s no obvious way to measure such a thing, but as a matter of intuition, you’d have to say that the most hated people in America today are sensible Democrats. The hard-core partisans of the Democratic left have never had a bigger megaphone than they now have on the Internet, and while they are united in the view that George W. Bush is public enemy No. 1, with Alberto Gonzales and Karl Rove alternating in the No. 2 slot, what really pumps up the volume is any sign of deviationism on their own side.

This is an especially acute problem for the Democratic foreign policy establishment–the people who will actually be staffing a Clinton or Obama administration at the National Security Council, the State Department, and the Pentagon. Whether you agree with them on policy or not, they are serious people who recognize they’re going to have to deal with the world as it is. Unfortunately, this sensibility often runs afoul of the netroots view that the world flowed with milk and honey until Bush ruined everything. Continue reading →