There are good reasons to believe that the 42^nd president thinks that the chair in the Oval Office is either empty or might as well be until Mitt Romney is elected.

Can you believe that the fellow -- Mr. Clinton -- who is widely reported to have called the Empty Chair an "amateur" -- is the same fellow who is going to formally nominate Empty to a second term, without having had his speech seriously vetted (and perhaps not at all -- that is the best bet) beforehand?

What better, richer, and more conclusive demonstration of Mr. Clinton's point could there possibly be?

Of course, as Edward Klein suggested on September 3, the economy is very, very rotten, and the current occasional occupier of the White House was faced with a choice of Mr. Clinton on Mr. Clinton's terms or no Mr. Clinton at all.  What kind of message would the latter option have sent?

Thus, the political stars of the man known as Barack Hussein Obama II are as crossed today as they were aligned in 2008.

In a June 8, 2012 contribution to American Thinker entitled "Did Bill Clinton Deliver a Coded Warning About Obama," this writer showed that there are very good reasons for believing that none other than Mr. Clinton (aka "Big Dog") slyly fingered Obama as both a Communist and a grave threat to what remains of capitalism.

The article also said that powerful Clintonian forces were crystallizing, and that Mr. Obama was going to pay the price for displaying the pomposity, unbridled narcissism, and grandiosity of a political tyro who has had enormous power hand-delivered to his lap.

Obviously, many things have transpired since June.  Mr. Clinton himself largely turned invisible, went under, and remained submerged until August, when a much-ballyhooed (by the MSM) ad popped up (discussed momentarily) ostensibly supporting the man known as Obama and featuring a refreshed-looking 42^nd president.

Can you believe that on September 3, two days before Mr. Clinton's signature DNC speech, news emerged that Douglas Band, a young (39) and top aide to Mr. Clinton, will be voting for Mr. Romney?

I mean, how uproariously funny is all of this?  What a bracing insult to the Empty Chair!

Put that together with the fact, mentioned above, that Mr. Clinton has refused to render unto Caesar the contents of his (Mr. Clinton's) DNC speech, and what we have in the Obama camp is buckets of cold sweat and a sense that it's too late to avoid the trapdoor. 

Then there's the Clinton quote, just now making the rounds and broken by the New Yorker's Ryan Lizza, where Clinton says that "a few years ago this [Empty Chair] guy would have been carrying our bags."

Sounds an awful lot like the Clinton quote from a while back about Obama and coffee, doesn't it?

Do you think Mr. Clinton has any friends at Newsweek?  What a cover from "out of nowhere" that was!

And, what the devil's going on over at CNN?

September 3 brought a John King article talking about Democratic decline. 

How about the shredding of the highly photogenic Debbie Wasserman Schultz by, on separate occasions, no less, Messrs. Cooper and Blitzer?

Now let's take a look at the August 23, 2012 ad featuring Mr. Clinton entitled "Clear Choice."

To dummies like Chrissy Matthews who see only what they want to see (which is why they see "racism" everywhere), the ad seems perfectly sunny and supportive of Empty.

However, here is the Clinton text from the ad:

This election to me is about which candidate is more likely to return us to full employment.

This is a clear choice. The Republican plan is to cut more taxes on upper income people and go back to deregulation. That's what got us in trouble in the first place."

President Obama has a plan to rebuild America from the ground up, investing in innovation, education, and job training. It only works if there is a strong middle class.

That's what happened when I was President. We need to keep going with his plan.

Clearly Mr. Clinton has to make a pitch that is sufficiently pro-Empty on the surface to maintain credibility in Democratic circles; he's not going to shriek, with bullhorn in hand, "Vote Romney!"

When you look carefully at the language, you see that Mr. Clinton says that President Obama has a plan, but then says that "it" works only if there is a strong middle class. 

Is the middle class strong now?  No.  Who hasn't heard, for example, that median incomes are down $4,000? 

So Mr. Clinton says that Empty's plan works only if the middle class is strong, but everyone (surely including Mr. Clinton) knows that it isn't.  Therefore, Mr. Clinton is really saying that Mr. Obama's plan will not work. 

Then, Mr. Clinton reminds us that there was (according to him, anyway) a strong middle class when he was president ("That's what happened when I was president"), after which he says that "we need to keep going with his plan."

On the surface, "his plan" clearly refers to Obama's plan.  However, we have just shown that Mr. Clinton has in fact said that Obama's plan will not work.  Therefore, the plan that Mr. Clinton is saying we need to go with when he says "his plan" is his own, not Obama's -- which also explains why Mr. Clinton says "we need to keep going with his plan" right after referring to his own presidency. 

After all, Mr. Clinton could very easily have said instead that "we need to keep going with President Obama's plan," where the latter is what a genuine, unequivocal endorsement of Obama would seem to require. 

Mr. Clinton's plan surely has something to do with 2016.

What will he say at the 2012 DNC convention to help sink the fraud known as Obama? 

Of course, nobody can be sure, but perhaps we can trace the lineaments.

Above all, Mr. Clinton is a transnational progressive who goes lighter on the fascism than Obama.  He is therefore sure to send signals on an economic front that he knows more -- much more -- about the global economy than Obama does. 

His speech will be a little "green," but older (including more traditional) and wiser than Obama.

He's using all kinds of inside information, of course, so he might drop a technical detail or two about Obama/Davis' national security shortcomings. 

Mr. Clinton is notoriously sore about his not having gotten bin Laden.  He therefore might try to abet the current trend by finding a way to detract from the undeserved credit Obama lavishes upon himself in regard to bin Laden's killing.

In fact, there is some reason to think that Clintonian forces (this time, in the person of Dianne Feinstein) warned Obama about taking too much credit for bin Laden's death even before Obama announced the killing, since Feinstein announced it first.

Here is something else that in all likelihood hurt Old Dog's bum ticker badly: the Obama-sponsored "racism" smears from 2008.

Those must have seared.  Whatever else he is, there is no reason to believe Mr. Clinton is any more racist than the next Democrat. 

Wouldn't it be terrific if the man increasingly known to be Empty -- whose entire career has been built for him by other race-milkers as well as seedy and in most cases very shadowy Communists -- were compelled to confront his racism when it's least in his interest to do so?

This is not to say that ole Trayvon will be resurrected (all by way of "supporting" Obama/Davis, of course), but who knows?  

There is one thing, though, that we can be sure of: that Mr. Clinton is speaking when he is, where he is, and under conditions that he has completely controlled in spite of his having already humiliated Obama shows that he, not the Empty Chair, is in the driver's seat from here on out.

Dr. Jason Kissner is associate professor of criminology at California University, Fresno.  You can reach him at crimprof2010@hotmail.com.