Sullivan posts this note about why people vote Hillary, and I think it’s right on the money:

What they know about Clinton is that she was a part of the Administration that spent eight years talking about issues that were important to them and presiding over an era of peace and prosperity. So what they are going on here is familiarity and positive experiences, the same thing that I do when I buy only Japanese cars.  This is a perfectly reasonable way of going about doing things even if I might make a mistake and select a very high quality Japanese car (Hillary in this analogy) instead of a surprisingly better this year in spite of lack of experience American car (Obama).

He notes:

I found out that a friend supported Clinton last night. I was stunned. I asked him why. He said he liked the 1990s, they were good times, he’d like them back. That was it. He had no real feelings about Obama, but he knew the Clinton name and associated it with good times. I pushed further. That was it.

I absolutely think this is what’s going on; Bill Clinton, whatever her personal faults, presided over “good times.” And Hillary can resurrect them.

Can she? The world’s awfully different than it was in the ’90s. Iraq and Iran, obviously, loom as major challenges. And the economic situation is vastly different; if the cost of energy remains as high as it is today, this country will never recapture the prosperity of the ’90s - or of the early 2000s, for that matter.

That’s one of the reasons I have specifically trended away from Hillary - because I don’t believe you can ever go back, and I think the idea you can is dangerous, all longing for the past rather than a sober look at the future. But I suppose it’s all about the devil you know, rather than the newcomer you don’t.