I am going to make the kind of assertion here that can not be supported by empircal evidence. It is just a sense that I have had over the past few months. Much of it comes from being a Clinton supporter who stuck it out on dailykos on many days when I felt disrespected and unwanted. I was trying all the time to keep my support of my candidate positive. I don't think I ever wrote anything negative about Barack Obama. He is a great candidate, who appears to have wrapped up the nomination, and he will have my enthusiastic support in the general election.
Of course, there were things about the Clinton campaign that I did not like. Much of that happened when she got behind, and the candidate that is behind has to run a different kind of campaign than the one in the lead, but that does not excuse all of her tactics that displeased me. To me, it was always about policy and competence, though, and I was not going to abandon the candidate I believed to be the most competent and and to have the best policies just because of some disagreeable campaign tactics.
Here is my point. My experience on this site in the past few months is that each candidate's supporters mirrored their opponent more closely than they reflected their own candidate. There may have been exceptions which I did not see, but I never read diaries or comments from Clinton supporters saying they would never vote for Obama in November. I saw hundreds of comments from Obama supporters saying things like this. In fact, I am hard-pressed to remember negative comments about Obama from Clinton supporters, and, well, we all know about the converse of that. It may be that dailykos is a unique environment, but I saw Hillary Clinton's supporters on this site acting more like Barack Obama, and Barack Obama's supporters acting more like Hillary Clinton (or, more accurately, like some of her more unlikeable campaign staff).
Today seems to be a day for letting bygones be bygones, and that is fine with me. I am concerned about the general election, though. As I make my move over the coming weeks to become a Barack Obama supporter, I would like to be part of a group of supporters that mirrors him in attitude and behavior (He is in every way an admirable person). My fear is that instead we will start to look and sound like John McCain and his campaign. How do we keep that from happening?