Reply #3: You're pretty naive if you think he doesn't know who they are ... [View All]

[frazzled]

and that for political or ideological reasons they will never "help" him. He knows that better than you or I.

He reaches out for a different reason: because he fundamentally believes that people who disagree need to find ways to speak to each other, for the good of the nation. He knows that anything he might do can be undone when the opposition comes into power. He's focused on changing the way we do politics over the long term, painful as it may be to us to watch right now. We want him to smack them down and exclude them. But he's kind of better than us.