Common Lisp has two strikes against it: it's old and its community is dysfunctional. A lot of people attracted to the idea of Lisp, but repelled by one or both of those attributes, have found a home in Clojure.<p>It's much too early to tell whether Clojure will prove a technical success in the long run (let alone a worthy successor to CL, which, for all the things people say they don't like about it, is one of the magnificent achievements of computing).