I’ve seen speculation that BO is not shadowing (as in following), but is preceding POTUS.
In either case, I agree with your second paragraph.
What I find most interesting is how quiet the usual suspects have been in past 1o months. yeah, a little snarky bite here and there, but for the most part, all the suspects have been relatively quiet. I do follow some of them on twitter just to listen for noise. Some can be pretty tough, but nothing that makes headlines.