A front page article today quotes the WaPo,
The move is based on a political calculation, drawn from his party's midterm defeat, that places a premium on winning back independent voters.
Ah yes, those elusive independent voters. Who are they?
Come to think of it, I once thought of myself as "independent", rather than as a Democrat. Are we entering another one of those phases when many Democrats move to the ranks of the unenrolled? I lost my Democratic connection when the president that I had supported turned out to be very different after the election. He didn't govern the way he had campaigned; he tacked hard to the right, and by the time he took a shellacking in the midterms, the base was talking primary time.