Obama thinks he IS the center.
There are Richard Daley types using big government is a money tree for sinecures for union goons and old boy networks, and that is the conservative establishment, since they still believe in private property and cops controlling crime. There are revolutionary anarchists who want to shoot all the white people tomorrow and loot the Loop, and that is the left. And there is highbrow intellectuals for socialist redistribution, and that is the moderate center.
There are supposedly some weird racists in the suburbs that can be demonized and taxed, and rumor has it some downstate hayseeds still living in the 12th century, but nobody cares about any of them.