If we are in a culture war,

and it seems pretty clear that we are, then I expect that every president from now until that war ends will be hated by the other side. If Howard Dean is elected, and if he delivers the kind of presidency he is promising, then I almost surely will come to hate him, and it probably won’t take long. Before you deny that you will do the same, think about how bitter you will feel if President Bush loses the election for successfully defeating and occupying Iraq.
The incumbent president and his predecessor were both about as centrist from a policy perspective as our system is likely to produce. Both are intensely hated. There’s not much point, in the context of a discussion about hating, in debating the comparative merit of the justifications offered for the hatred. In the end, those arguments come down to claiming to be on the right side of the culture war.
HINDROCKET adds: Deacon, on the whole I think this short and simple analysis is probably the most accurate. For better or worse, we should be prepared for a lot of hate for some years to come.