There are rumblings of two distinct but related problems for Barack Obama. The first is elected moderate and conservative Democratic officials trying to distance themselves from Obama. The second is Democratic voters expressing queasiness about Obama. The latter no doubt is responsible for much of the former (i.e. if your constituents don’t like the top of the ticket, it is wise to distance yourself from him).

So what happened to the storyline that Hillary Clinton was the most divisive politician of our time? Well, much of that chatter referred to her toxic quality with independents and Republicans. But we have yet to see polling that shows Obama is eating into McCain’s base or taking the lion’s share of independents. So if he isn’t doing that well outside the base and he’s created a problem within the base–isn’t he more divisive than Clinton?