The way things can work is that that president and other "respectables" can stay out of the fray while some noisier members of Congress along with media surrogates go a bit more wild (on any issue). That's never how things work with Dems because instead of complementing their noisier surrogates, they often distance themselves, which then just leads to intra-party tension.
This is also why donors don't fund media. Even Think Progress was too spicy for them and had to be terminated.
