Sure, it’s tempting to think the Democrats will have a real race on their hands, and perhaps for a time they will. But fundamentally, primary elections are dominated and decided by partisans - people who identify with a party and go to the effort of registering and showing up to vote in intraparty elections. People who feel strongly about their side, in short. And when you consider the psychology of the typical partisan on either side, and apply it to the situation of Democratic voters in 2008, it becomes quickly apparent why it will be impossible for a critical mass of such partisans to be convinced to vote against Hillary.

Jonah Goldberg aptly describes how the Clintons are playing to their partisan crowd:

Bill Clinton has been stumping for his wife on the Iowa hustings, framing the election as a referendum on his tenure as president. . .

Last summer, when he first started hawking Hillary like a door-to-door salesman, he told a crowd: “I know some people say, ‘Look at them. They’re old. They’re sort of yesterday’s news.’…

“Well,” Slick Willie said, grinning, “yesterday’s news was pretty good.”

Indeed, Hillary’s entire campaign has been grounded in her experience in the Clinton administration of the 1990s, even though that experience mostly involves designing a failed health-care plan and unsuccessfully hectoring her husband to move to the left. Still, as New York Times editorial writer Adam Cohen noted in a column last week, it was her decision to make the choice between her and Barack Obama a “referendum on a decade.”

Why is this important? Because it explains why Democrats who vote in primaries simply cannot pull the lever against Hillary: it would mean admitting that returning the Clintons to the White House would not be the greatest of all possible things. It’s inconceivable. (And yes, Democrats of all people are very practiced at refusing to understand what that word means). Sure, left-wing ideologues and activists may be willing to do that, especially those who ground their teeth for 8 years and viewed the Clintons as little more than moderate Republicans. But not the rank and file of the party.

We Republicans have had 5 Presidents in the past 40 years; we can retain some perspective on their respective weaknesses. Besides Carter, who ended in defeat so ignominious that nobody but maybe Chris Matthews defends him on any grounds other than being well-intentioned, Clinton is all Democrats have, and his Administration must therefore be held up as All Things Good. And if you are emotionally invested in the idea that Clinton was a great president and all criticisms of him were manifestations of right-wing mania, right-wing racism, right-wing conspiracy, right-wing-being-threatened-by-powerful-women, and right-wing latent homosexuality (the Sid Blumenthal theory, I kid you not), it is nearly impossible to construct a justification for refusing a third helping, unless you are morally convinced that she cannot win in November. And the Clintons’ prior record of electoral success, for a party that has lost so many national elections, stands as a barrier to that argument as well.

As Jim Geraghty has noted, this is doubly the case because of how hard rank and file Democrats dug themselves in against the scandals of the Clinton years:

Whitewater, the cattle futures, the disappearing and reappearing billing records - on every scandal, most grassroots Democrats came to her defense, and insisted she was the blameless victim of a partisan witch hunt. When health care reform went down in flames, they had to overlook her faults. Chinese fundraising? Renting out the Lincoln Bedroom? Time and again, they looked at emerging facts - or perhaps the proper metaphor is closed their eyes - and declared, “it is not her fault, she has done nothing wrong.”

Finally, the women: Gennifer Flowers, Paula Jones, Kathleen Willey, Monica Lewinsky: on each of them, grassroots Democrats told themselves, and the rest of the country, that the charges were false, that this wasn’t the public’s concern, that each and every one of the tawdry tales was a puritan smear job of the right-wing conspiracy.

We laughed at Michael Kelly’s “I Believe” column. To our friends on the left, there was nothing funny or ironic about it.

Now, these same Democrats are supposed to be persuaded when Obama or Edwards brings up the pardon of Marc Rich? They’re supposed to turn on her because one of them reminds them of disappearing White House silverware?

Declaring that Hillary Clinton has done nothing wrong is as instinctive as breathing to many Democrats now.

Nominating Obama or Edwards over Hillary now would invalidate all of those defenses over the years. It would mean her critics had a point all these years, and they cannot concede that core belief they’ve held close to their hearts for a decade and a half. Democrats aren’t just supportive of Hillary Clinton’s rise to the presidency: they’re emotionally and intellectually invested in it.

Goldberg underlines how this would play out if Hillary is repudiated by her own party:

[I]f Hillary Clinton loses the race for the nomination — heck, even if she just loses the Iowa caucuses — I hope to see this headline somewhere, perhaps in the New York Post: “America to Clinton(s): We’re Just Not That Into You.”

The rush of schadenfreude would be so overwhelming, the entire Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy would have to hie itself to its fainting couch.

Heck, Rush Limbaugh would enter the Guiness Book for schadenfreude. Can you imagine Rush’s reaction? I tell you this, somewhere in their heart of hearts, Democrats all across this land of ours will enter the voting booth with that miniature Voice of Rush playing somewhere in the back of their heads, laughing and laughing and laughing, and they will tell themselves that Obama is young and it’s not his turn yet. And they will pull the lever for Bill’s wife.

Remember: no matter what else we may think strategically about 2008, if Hillary were rejected by her own party, every one of us would do The Jig To End All Jigs over her defeat. That’s a sound Democratic primary voters simply cannot hear.