Andrew Malcolm, IBD:

For months now Barack Obama has been saying he’s run his last political campaign. Uh-huh. If you believe Obama would give up his favorite pastime just to focus on the nation’s business and because he’s not a candidate, then you can keep your health plan. Period.

In good times and bad, Obama is out there raking in the money for himself or the party or congressional campaign committees. You may recall, the day after the four Benghazi murders, he was fundraising in Vegas. The same day as the most recent Fort Hood shooting memorial service, he was fundraising in Houston.

And Wednesday after a quick survey of Arkansas tornado damage, Obama was fundraising.

In California, of all places. Obama doesn’t even make a pretense of listening or speaking to real voters there. For the man who’s presided over a steep jump in income inequality, the golden state is merely the nation’s most populous ATM full of faithful, gullible rich folks.

Word is it’s a little bit harder these days to sell out his events. So, they’re held in backyard tents that can more easily be filled.

And his fundraising speeches are shorter too. For couples who paid $64,000 to dine in the Bel Air backyard of Disney chairman Alan Horn, the experience of hearing Hillary Clinton’s former boss cost almost $5,000 per minute — or $41 for each of Obama’s 1,570 words, 23 of them “I.”

Obama forgot to say words like “Affordable Care Act” or “ObamaCare,” for reasons possibly connected with their steaming unpopularity.

This spring’s fundraiser-speech theme is “OMG, we’ve got to keep Senate control and win back the House so California’s own Nancy Pelosi can help protect all the wonderful things we have accomplished these past five years.” Also, “Our people are not as diligent about voting in midterms as the other side.”

And the first Democrat president to win reelection since Clinton diagnosed another serious problem. He left out his Libyan war that turned that country over to al Qaeda and he didn’t say “malaise.” But Obama did say:

“Despite all that, despite ending two wars, despite the progress that we’ve made on issues that are important to everybody here, there’s still disquiet around the country. There’s an anxiety and sense of frustration. And the reason is, is because people understand that for all that we’ve done, the challenges out there remain daunting and we have a Washington that’s not working.”

— Which, if I may interject, is only partially true.  Washington is not working when the GOP establishment refuses to represent the wishes of its constituency and surrenders to Democrats in order to avoid looking like “obstructionists.”  Which is much of the time, granted.  But at other times, however wobbly, they manage to stand their ground and block legislation Obama wants — which is what the President means when he refers to “a Washington that’s not working,” though like in nearly every case, he’s quite wrong:  this is precisely how Congress was designed, as part of a system of checks and balances and a way to slow down the legislative imperatives of a faux-populist juggernaut.

Of course, Obama has found away around that:  he’s essentially turned the presidency into a monarchy, which grants him title of King.  And it’s good to be the king — though as Obama constantly emotes, heavy is the head that wears the crown, what with all these stupid bitterclingers so unappreciative of his efforts to fix the world for us and recreate it in His image.

But I digress.

[…]

The president, however, voiced optimism because “the good news is we’ve got public opinion on our side.”

Which is news, indeed.

Except for history’s pattern of a White House incumbent’s party getting pasted in second-term congressional elections. Obama’s job approval rating now at its lowest level ever. Even worse approval of his economic performance. Overwhelming public dislike of ObamaCare. Its hollow numbers and soaring costs, with worse to come. Almost four people gave up on job-hunting last month for every one who got hired.

And new polls showing the GOP pulling ahead in popularity on the generic congressional ballot. But other than that, Obama is telling the truth again.

It’s a long time until Nov. 4, of course — 180 days to be precise. And Obama could still kill Osama bin Laden again. But since when does reality reign in the Obama administration?

Not to nitpick here, but “reality,” to the leftist antifoundationalist mind, is tied to perception, and as they control the message — and so hope to control the perception — they sincerely do believe that what they say, in an effort to will it into being, is indeed reality, at least, when they succeed in entrenching the narrative they’ve created.

It’s the ultimate narcissistic conceit.

— Well, that is, unless you count the belief that you and your fellow travelers are much smarter than anyone and everyone that came before you, that history is alive and begins anew with you as part of its inevitable, teleological march, and that therefore you were put on this earth to run it entirely by your own lights, shepherding the poor masses into their domestic pens and, in the end, making the place comfortable for you and yours to gaze upon, freed from the blight of anything that doesn’t fit the mental image of Utopia your Fabian and Marxist mentors drilled into your youthful mush brains.

But then, that’s just really splitting hairs, isn’t it?