As one of my favorite political experts is fond of saying, "Obama acts like he'd really rather be an ex-president." This week, he sort of got his wish.
There's no third-act rally to hope for now. The One True Hero is not going to vanquish the unexpectedly tenacious super villain. The last two years of Barack Obama's presidency will be spent with a solid Republican majority in both houses of Congress, one delivered, in large part, by voters' discontent with Obama himself.
If there is one thing that Obama should regret most deeply, it was this fateful quote: "Elections have consequences," he said. "I won." Republican intransigence has stymied the president for four years. But the seeds of that revolution were laid in the first two years of Obama's term, when giddy Democrats decided that he was the second coming of FDR, and Republicans would just have to go along with the Democratic agenda or get left behind.