It's probably silly to talk about shades of meaning in a universe of public discourse where newspapers long ago laid off the last old-school copy editor, but in this particular instance it may be worthwhile to step outside the context of all those warm and fuzzy slogans which elected a cold and cynical President, and ask...
What's the difference between sympathy and empathy?
Sympathy means the stimulation in a person of feelings that are similar in kind to those that affect another person; empathy means a mental or affective projection into the feelings or state of mind of another person.
If I sympathize with you, I feel what you feel, but empathy is more like mental role-playing. Classical actors understand a character, but method actors feel the pain.
Empathy is different from sympathy in that to be empathetic one understands how the person feels rather than actually experiencing those feelings, as in sympathy.
For a con-man like Obama, sympathy would be a crippling disability. Who wants to feel what the suckers feel? But every successful con-man is a master of empathy. How else can you figure out what the suckers will fall for?
This distinction has absolutely no cash-value in the United States today, except for a marginal difference in tone. "Empathy" is a slightly more intellectual representative of the empathy/sympathy hodge-podge, and probably more appropriate for a speech by the sort of high-class con-man who belongs in the Ivy League and Oval Office, instead of Las Vegas and San Quentin.
