From Time magazine:

But Clinton’s shadow may still overwhelm the present. It’s hard to say what the party became under Clinton because he was the party, and he was so notoriously hard to define. Dismissive of his message but dazzled by his success, many Democrats just hummed to themselves and looked the other way because it was working, and he was winning. “You can’t erase Bill Clinton if you never embraced him in the first place,” says a former official who unlike many Clinton aides really was a New Democrat. “Clinton defined the direction of the country irrespective of the party,” the aide says. Clinton knew he would be the youngest ex-President since Teddy Roosevelt, who left office at age 51 and proceeded to divide his party out of bitterness over the direction it had taken. That is not a path Clinton wants to follow. He too wants a legacy, and it may be defined not by what he did in the past but by how he manages those who will be the party’s future.

(All the more reason Dems should read Rich Lowry’s Legacy, natch. You know I had to.)