Politicians regularly wrestle with the tension between all and nothing.  Voters rarely reward the faint of heart but tend to flock to winners who risk and win.  The Democrats have won big in the last eight years partly by capitalizing on the distance between all and nothing.  When they put a proposal forward, they make it say everything; no compromise and no concessions.  This strategy has granted the Democrats (Republicans, not squeamish about using such tactics when they are in power) two advantages.  First, when the legislation fails, only grabbing support from a handful of ideologues and purists, the party in power can claim that its opponents are obstructionists.  More than that, the opponents resist the principle of the intended legislation making them bad people.  Consider the resent piece of legislation on guns which failed in the Democratically held Senate.  If the Democrats were smart, they would have passed the legislation piecemeal the way that Lyndon Johnson worked for Civil Rights or the way that Henry Clay passed the Compromise of 1850.  Rather, President Obama poured all his goals into a single piece of legislation (clip limitations, assault rifle, and background checks) knowing that if it did not pass he could accuse the opposition of standing idly by while more kids are killed.  The Democrats did the same thing with the Dream Act in 2011 when Senator Reid reintroduced the bill without the border enforcement component.  Republicans had agreed to vote for the act as long as the border security went with the bill, then Senators Reid and Durbin removed the border security component.  When the Republican supporters bailed the Democrats labeled them Tea Party radicals.
Second, Democrats have been able to promote themselves as the only people with ideas.  Of course during President Bush's administration the Democrats turned "No" into a political motto, engraved on the very keystone of American democracy - the right to resist.  Now the Republicans are the party of no and the Democrats position themselves as the people with ideas willing to risk their professional careers to get something done.  Thus, the reigning party claims that their opponents offer no ideas, or at leas no serious ideas, about how to better the country.  We are told to ignore the idea that the Senate has reneged on its responsibility to produce a budget every year because they know full well that the Republicans would never pass whatever budget the Democrats put forward.
In recent debates over guns, healthcare, and gay marriage, we have been told that we can only choose between all or nothing.  Problematically, no party gets everything; demanding it will yield nothing.  Once the public becomes frustrated with such false-dilemmas, the party in power will appear narrow and obstinate, a set of characteristics that ruin political losers.