I still have the vague suspicion that there's ONE big reason why no one likes Hilary, and it's not her policies. It becomes more apparent with people who are too stupid to defend their views. I remember asking around in 08 and hearing "Well, she's just a bitch!" and "Ugh, why would I vote for HER?" from people who knew nothing about politics and had only heard of the primaries from passing glances at the news or because Obama was running. While I have no doubt that his race alienated a great deal of people, I also have no doubt that it earned him a great deal of support and interested young people in being a part of history. However, while we may be a partially racist society, we have been almost entirely patriarchal since the founding of the country. Well, her time came and passed so I suppose crying about it isn't going to change anything.
I'm not a Hillary fan, but I actually agree with most of this.
I wanted to dive back into the 2008 primaries and find some of my discussions about her on another forum. There was fairly little rational discussion of Hillary outside a few core members. Even opposing her I spent more time defending her from assholes.
Her biggest problem was (and probably still is, but less so since her time in State) that she was a counter-culture figure who was, in realistic terms, a moderate conservative policy wise, similar to Bill. Combine that with what lots of people have described as a ruthless and ambitious personality (that mostly comes from people I've spoken to and articles out of Arkansas, before her time in the White House and Senate) and you have a figure who is hard to get people behind.
This article is a nice piece on how the early Clinton vs Giuliani match-up was pretty much a proxy Vietnam era fight. Obama belonged to the newer generation (he was a late boomer, but born to a mid-boom mother who is closer to Clinton in age than he is).
Actually, that article does a good job of explaining why I threw my lot in with Obama over Clinton early.