You are a very good soul, gotalife!

She's gonna do us proud!

I never hated her either, and really couldn't understand all the venom directed towards her. She's always been a smart, smart woman and never one to back down from a just fight.

She's going to be very effective as Secretary.

I remember many of those battles, and they were good times, indeed. At least, in retrospect! You rarely failed to make your point - thanks for doing it again here.

Choosing Biden was a mistake, though.

I loved the concept of Hillary running for the high office - I supported her to the end. President Obama made a smart choice when he picked her for the Secretary of State position. She's smart and well known around the world and can begin contributing immediately. I fear it may be a long time before we get another woman presidential candidate with her brains, experience and motivation - a rare combination.

Hello old friends.

The reception she received as she entered the State Department was great.

The start of the President Obama administration is flying with change and very impressive.

Much work to be done and I am confident they will succeed.

Well done yet again, old bean. Though I do miss the Palin avatar. :)

As WJC has said, politics ain't beanbag. The primary campaign was particularly tough, in large part because both Dem finalists had to know they would be favored against Senator Straight Talk.

In the end, though, your girl - and her guy - helped deliver the goods. And you did as well. Merci, mon ami.

I didn't hate Hillary. I just thought Obama was a better candidate than her. And that her campaign was run by idiots (I really hope she didn't pay Mark Penn's bill).

How about we all copy and past this blog and it's comments and put it away for retrieval in 7 years time? Heated primaries hardly ever end in real intraparty fratricide. This wasn't 1968 when George Wallace took the racists south and the Chicago police and Mayor Daley tried to tell the young left there was no room for us in his convention city let alone the party or even 1948 when Dixiecrats bolted. Hell we won in 1948 without Strom Thurmond and his ilk and almost beat Nixon with Hubert Humphrey and half a party in 1968 too.

Let's remember this next time. Take the kabuki theater of the primaries for what it is and it'll cause a lot less angst, anger and sleepless nights.

Well, perhaps I just have a suspicious mind, but I'm keeping my eye on her anyway, just as I am on several other Obama appointments I don't fully trust. This is Washington we're talking about, not church choir.

I wasn't thrilled with Clinton's campaign, but she knocked my socks off during the general election. Her willingness to campaign for Obama demonstrated how tough and how classy she is.

It is a new day. I'm agreeing with gotalife....

Well, at least she can't vote for any more wars.

I have a desire to edit your first line to:

Wow, what a change in the mindset of TPM's reader bloggers.

Here's Andrew Golis, eight months ago, check it out to refresh your memory of what this site was like. :-)

I don't believe most Democratic voters ever hated Hillary, many just preferred Obama as it became more likely that he could win, but were proud of Hillary as a candidate as well. They were proud of both candidates and of their party and liked the long primary. They saw, unlike many here, that there was very little policy difference between the two.

The people who did hate Hillary just happened to congregate on sites like this, and, by bullying others who didn't share their hate and chasing them away, gave an impression that they were greater in number than they really were.

Then, with the non-Hillary-hating chased away, they created an echo chamber where they listened to each other make up narratives about how evil Hillary's campaign was. And they made people like gotalife into imaginary enemies to fight, basically baited into becoming a troll if he wanted to participate in conversation on this site. They spent a lot of time and passion doing that.

I hope at least a few realize how wasteful that was and how much it was like a new version of Juvenal's old saw--it was the virtual people creating bread and circuses to distract themselves from what was really going on. Much of what got posted here at the height of Hillary hate was in the end imaginary hysteria, having little to do with reality and much to do with creating emotional responses. So much for the people power of the blogosphere, to do--what exactly?

She helped take us into Iraq. We'll see if she is any help getting us out. At least the bloggers educated me on Iraq. They knew it was unjustified and would turn into a enormous waste of lives and treasure. We'll see. We'll see if she has the courage to take some risks for peace now. She did not before. Watch what she does not what she says.

The view from this Israeli, Yoel Marcus, writing in Haaretz is instructive in his warnings about Obama and Hillary and even more importantly, revealing about how Israelis viewed and used their influence.

Marcus relates the disgraceful story of Olmert's boastful wagging of the Bush doggie and warns:

"Those kinds of antics are just not going to work with a toughie like Hillary Clinton running the State Department. I don't see our leaders cooking up deals with presidents or supporters of Israel in Congress like they used to, now that Obama is at the helm."
...

"But Obama's commitment to the State of Israel is not a given, the way it was for previous presidents. There is no sign in his past of any special feelings for us."

Marcus goes on to describe the nature and degrees of commitment to Israel of various US presidents and concludes:

"Obama, as we have said, is not as emotionally involved in ties with Israel. His age and background are certainly factors, but another factor is that AIPAC was asleep while Obama grew up under its nose.

No matter what you make of world events and the global economic crisis, for us the coming years will be marked by defense challenges. Obama does not have the biblical-emotional sympathy for us that Clinton and Bush had."

Marcus warns Israelis:

"In practice, Hillary Clinton will be the person most involved in our affairs. It is crucial that we work with her and not against her, and that we don't try to bypass her via the president or vice president, who is considered a friend of Israel. We will have to change the way we play the game.

The long and the short of it is that we need to conduct ourselves differently with this new administration. Like porcupines making love, we will need to be very careful. The next Israeli government will have to watch itself and not do anything rash. It will have to give up the habit of telling the Americans what is good for them."
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1057978.html

Good advice. Let's see if anyone listens.

When our towers came down and thousands died, the likelihood the US government would one day enter into negotiations with a militant Islamic faction like Hamas seemed beyond ridiculous. And it's through the lens of 9/11 that many Americans still see the Middle East. I wish George Mitchell good luck because the area needs peace. But I wouldn’t expect that to happen until both parties reject the use of violence to further their cause. When Hamas lunches anti-personnel rockets into Israel to kill and terrorize discriminately, it's a problem. Then when Israel retaliates and Hamas hides under the skirts of it’s women, thus assuring high civilian losses, peace drops off the radar screen. Hamas won the election because there was no legitimate alternative - the peace process would need to provide one.