Hillary Clinton is turning up the rhetoric a bit. At a rally on Sunday she had this to say:

“Now, I could stand up here and say let’s just get everybody together, let’s get unified…the sky will open, the light will come down celestial choirs will be singing, and everyone will know that we should do the right thing and the world will be perfect. Maybe I’ve just lived a little long but I have no illusions about how hard this will be.”

She sounded a similar message in an interview with CBN:

“I think that there is a certain phenomenon associated with this candidacy, and I am really struck by that, because it is very much about him and his personality and his presentation, and that’s perfectly legitimate in politics or any other walk of life, but I think it endangers or oversimplifies the complexity of the problems we face, the challenges of navigating our country through some difficult uncharted waters. We are a nation at war; that seems to be forgotten.”

She is right, but the message is a downer. She is telling audiences that this nice young man is selling you a bill of goods and it is not as easy as he makes it all sound. For a Democratic base that wants to believe it really is that easy (good intentions will melt the heart of dictators and the “special interests”) it is not going to warm their hearts. The reality, of course, is that there are huge philosophical differences separating the parties domestically, as well as dangerous, intractable enemies abroad. There is a good case to be made–one that McCain will surely take up–that an ultra-liberal novice is not the right person to bridge domestic divisions and stare down international foes. However, a liberal Democratic primary electorate that doesn’t believe Barack Obama is too liberal and doesn’t believe the world is all that dangerous is more disposed to favor the “celestial choir” guy than the “you gotta be kidding” gal.