I like Electrum's approach still there is no real difference between a remote server and a local daemon. The issue is still duplication of work. If some fix needs to be made to the daemon then electrum needs to make the same change also.
On the other hand, we'd like to encourage to have a multitude of implementations making up the network in order for it to be more robust. Some vulnerability in satoshi node might not affect the other implementations und such protect the blockchain somewhat or make an attack on it much less effective.
