There were plenty of reasons to prefer Obama to Clinton in 2008; one of them was the notion that the fundamental corruption of the Clintons was an insuperable obstacle to meaningful dialogue with Republicans. Under this theory, Obama would be willing and able to reach out to the GOP, and civility would return to our politics.
I subscribed to that notion at the time. I have never regretted my support for Obama, but events have proven the Clintons correct on the civility issue; it is clear now that the Republicans consider all Democratic presidents to be equally illegitimate, because they don’t represent a majority of what they consider to be “real Americans”. And yes, there is a web of right-wing media outlets, donors, think tanks, and politicians which could plausibly be described as a “vast right-wing conspiracy.”
During the 2012 conventions, there was lots of talk from Republicans about what an ogre Obama was, and how much easier it was to do business with Bill Clinton in the good old days. I predicted then that everyone would forget those statements by 2016. Does anyone remember that now? Guess not.