The anti-Hillary effect

David Brooks makes several grand assertions today that are frustratingly hard to argue with, but at the same time impossible to validate. Here's one:

Now it’s evident that if you want to understand the future of the Democratic Party you can learn almost nothing from the bloggers, billionaires and activists on the left who make up the “netroots.” You can learn most of what you need to know by paying attention to two different groups — high school educated women in the Midwest, and the old Clinton establishment in Washington.

I actually think this is pretty much right, but that the implication--that Hillary Clinton is poised to win the Iowa primary--is still pretty speculative. At the very least, she'll have to overcome the Democratic primary version of the phenomenon that Republicans are counting on to help them in the general election next November--the anti-Hillary effect. As a deciding force in electoral politics, it's still totally speculative , but it's an effect exists very clearly in theory, and to some extent within both parties: Republican voters don't like Hillary Clinton and Democratic activists...also don't like Hillary Clinton. Iowa Democrats might split support pretty evenly between Edwards, Clinton, and Obama in state-wide polls, but the five percent of Iowa Democrats who actually vote in the caucuses could well skew--as high-information, left-wing voters--anti-Hillary Clinton. If that happens, and she loses the primary as a result, it will be yet more evidence that the way we select our candidates and our presidents badly subverts the will of the majority of the people, but it will also be a huge victory for the supposedly impotent Netroots.