It was amazing to see hardcore leftists defending everything he was doing simply because he wasn't bush.....
Not really. The smear campaign against Bush was well funded and started early. What you call hardcore leftists were just the useful idiots of the moment. They heard, they repeated, they hated like they were told.
ANYONE who believes that they have a right to install some 'leader' or another over their neighbors is a useful idiot to TPTB. If YOU have no right to force your neighbor to do something, how do you gain a right to grant to some politician to do that for you, magical incantations?