Antichrist, bird vomit, horse crap...?

A few days ago, I was browsing Amazon.com's book section to see what the presidential candidates have written. I came across Hillary Clinton's book Living History, which was written a few years ago. I noticed that Amazon has a feature that allows customers to "tag" items they sell with terms that among other things, aid other customers in finding that item through a site search. The tags for Senator Clinton's book were viciously derogatory, some of which I've listed in this post's title.

I'm not a strong Clinton partisan or opponent. I believe Senator Clinton is an intelligent person and capable politician, some of whose policy positions and actions I support, and some that I oppose. While I certainly can understand someone taking a stronger stance than I do in opposition to her political activities, or even her personal life, I don't understand what engenders such strong, apparent hatred.

I suppose the most reasonable explanation would be that her opponents are angered by her voting record, or her political position as a liberal Democrat generally. While Senator Clinton's political actions have not always fit the "liberal" mold, some non-partisan analyses have indicated she is one of the more liberal members of the Senate. So I checked another book, written by John Kerry, another presidential candidate who by the same analyses I linked to above was similar in his "liberalness" to Senator Clinton. A Call to Service: My Vision for a Better America had one common tag with Living History, "crap," clearly not eliciting the same level of negative response. Perhaps, it is because Senator Clinton is a female, liberal Democrat. So I looked at a book written by Nancy Pelosi, probably the next most prominent female, liberal Democrat at the moment, and it didn't receive any tags at all.

Obviously, the little analysis of Amazon book tags that I conducted has virtually no epistemic value, for many reasons, not the least of which is that Amazon book taggers are not a representative random group, but it does make me question the dynamic that exists to promote such an emotionally charged response to Senator Clinton. It should be noted that she won her last Senate race with 67% of the vote, almost 12% more than in the previous race, so her detractors may be fewer in number once they learn more about her. Also, depending on which poll one looks at, Senator Clinton would be competitive with any of her potential opponents in a general election race. However, some polling indicates that her ceiling of support may be lower than most other candidates at this point in a presidential campaign. Hopefully, if Senator Clinton does become the Democratic nominee, the discourse in the mainstream will not devolve to the point where her opponents are referring to her as an antichrist.