The far less experienced Obama came to office as a 53% president with a strong wind at his back in the honeymoon period the more friendly MSM allowed yet proceeded not to try his hardest to get the best possible legislation out of it, as Clinton did, but instead tried his best to make friends with an opposition who didn't want to be his BFF.  Very naive fellow, who still after the disastrous midterms doesn't seem to understand the nature of the political game being played against him.

Clinton now stands apart from both parties, accepting the shift to the right but determined to protect the elderly and the innocent.

Because, for Obama, I think you'd have to re-write it like this:

Obama now stands closer to the other party, aiding in the shift to the right, even at the expense of the old, the poor, the sick, the elderly and the innocent.

D-Day today:

Erskine Bowles and Alan Simpson, co-chairs of the President's fiscal commission, are holding a surprise press conference at this hour to announce the chairman's mark for recommendations to deal with the nation's budget deficit. Included in those recommendations are benefit cuts to Social Security and Medicare, as well as tax changes.

Importantly, this is a political gambit. It represents only the opinions of Bowles and Simpson and is not a consensus document. Clearly, the co-chairs are putting this out there to increase pressure on the commission members.

[snip]

On the specifics, according to Jamie Coleman, the recommendations would be phased in over a long time horizon. Here's what he claims:

Spending cuts phased in over a number of years to avoid undercutting economic recovery

Comprehensive social security reform including raising retirement age to 68 by 2050, 69 by 2075; reduced benefits for middle, upper income retirees

Reduced base rate for corporate taxes

Dramatic tax reform including dropping home mortgage interest deduction

Cut defense spending, close additional US bases

Alex Lawson has a livestream of the press conference going, after being initially thrown out of the conference. But the audio is a little faint. Basically you have the reduction in tax rates coupled by the elimination of tax expenditures, and a long-term reduction in Social Security benefits with increases in the retirement age and progressive price indexing. On health care, they pay for the doctor's fix with cuts in provider rates, and "increases in cost-sharing," which basically means higher costs for Medicare.

I'm still looking for "raise the ceiling on wages subject to the Social Security tax," but if it were there, we wouldn't have to discuss benefit cuts AT ALL.  The "reduced benefits for middle income retirees" is more worrisome than increased retirement ages that don't kick in for 40 or more years, and I have a feeling this is the dreaded indexing that is really going to hurt people - a lot of people.

Now, there may be lots of ways in which we could equate Obama and Clinton, and I know that when Erskine Bowles was in the Clinton administration he tried to broker some sort of fix to Social Security, but even at a time of rising prosperity, it never got off the ground.

Maybe someone needs to remind Obama that it's not 1993 anymore.

In these times today, Bill Clinton would not be a Bill Clinton Democrat.  He always adapted to the times.  (And as for the last two years, Bill Clinton with that mandate and these economic times certainly would not have been a Bill Clinton Democrat.)

So now we are arguing over the "blueness" of a given Blue Dog?

This is incredibly stupid.