The president spoke a lot about entitlements and entitlement reform during his presser just now. Most, if not all, of his talking points on Medicare and Social Security could have been lifted from Paul Ryan’s press shop. E.g. there was a lot of talk about how the big entitlements are going broke, and how we have to make fundamental changes to them now to ensure that future generations will still be able to enjoy their benefits. He even got in some pot shots at Democrats that could (and no doubt will) be deployed by the House Budget Committee comm staff, the most direct of which was probably: “The vast majority of Democrats on Capitol Hill would prefer to do nothing on entitlements.”
I have no illusions about President Obama’s commitment to entitlement reform on the substance, but the fact that when he talks about it he sounds far more like Paul Ryan than Harry Reid is itself a victory.