hey is there any way that when you delete a phrase from an audio clip, the whole rest of the clip will jump back in time to meet at the cut point, like in a regular audio editor. 

obviously this is not useful in multitrack projects, but for some of my voice-over projects this would come in super duper handy.

Hi,
select the part of the clip you want to delete, go to "Edit -> Delete Content" and check "Delete Gap".
(Hopefully these are the right terms because I don't have an english version of X2).

In X1 it was possible to make a keybinding / shortcut, but unfortunately not in X2 anymore or better said, I didn't find it.

Best,
Klaus

Klaus is pretty much there just the terms. It's Edit--->Delete Special then check the "delete hole" option.