General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: There's something happening to the Democratic Party... [View all]I have accused President Obama of being "annoyingly centrist" in the past, but is wasn't until I saw Bill Clinton speak last night that the true difference between them became evident to me.
A lot of what former President Clinton was saying and doing was quite in line with what he said and did when he was President. He was the master of identifying the common ground between himself and his enemies and dragging them onto that turf, while making concessions along the way.
But that doesn't work anymore in practice. President Obama seems to be much less compromising in what he wants, in part because his all-or-nothing opponents give him the opportunity to aim for exactly what he wants instead of compromising.
It brings up an interesting thought, which is that while President Clinton may have been the more liberal politician, President Obama has achieved the more progressive results.