> I don't have an article on hand, but even Democrats criticized Obama for having trouble forming cross-party friendships in a way someone like Bill Clinton did not.
Those Democrats are, in a word, idiots. Or, they are Clinton loyalists that assume their audience is composed of idiots.
(1) Bill Clinton had already been long in politics and established those cross-party relationships before the hyperpartisanship on the right which blossomed during his Presidency made that impractical.
(2) The ACA was a massive compromise because of the epic failure the last time Democrats tried to do healthcare reform—under Bill Clinton and led by Hillary Clinton—at a time when there was majority public support in public polling for national single payer, and the Clintons were not only unable to get their "cross party friendships" to pay off, but also unable to pass anything despite the Democratic majority they had. This left Democrats across the board scared and looking for compromises to get something on healthcare, which is why three Democrats (Clinton, Obama, and Edwards) went into the 2008 primary with nearly identical health care plans that were all very close to Romneycarr, which itself was virtually identical to what a number of insurers and Republicans proposed as a national alternative after the failure of Clinton's healthcare reform.
(3) Obama, with party control of Congress in his time in office following the same general pattern as Clinton's, achieved far more in terms of Democratic policy priorities than Clinton, and also didn't manage to get impeached by the House of Representatives. Clinton's cross-party friendships didn't pay any dividends.
If Obama is a better campaigner that "politician" (at least as far as the latter concerns effectively leveraging the office and personal relationships for legislative success), than that criticism is even more applicable to Clinton, who kept rolling over for the Right and getting nothing (or less) in return.