We were told by nearly every outlet of the liberal media in 2008 that Barack Hussein Obama had transformed the political landscape.  The politician that transcended politics, Obama was to be the defining figure of his generation, a Reaganesque icon who would remake the rhetoric of America for ages to come.

Now, six years later, he is a millstone around the Democrats’ necks.  As we approach a midterm election in which it appears the Democrats will be trounced, those running for national office as members of Obama’s own party are shunning him.  Those who once worshipped him as a political god are openly renouncing all association with him.  Democrat politicians in tight races are refusing to admit that they ever even voted for him.  So far has Obama’s name sunk -- from Caesar to clown -- that in Wisconsin, where Democratic challenger Mary Burke has been trying desperately to inject feminine outrage into her bid to unseat fiscal conservative Gov. Scott Walker, the female candidate has preferred to campaign with serial rapist William Jefferson Clinton than with the Democrat author of the War on Women strategy, the President of the United States.

During most mid-term elections, when the sitting president is unpopular he makes himself scarce, busying himself with foreign summits or with domestic photo ops designed to show that he is too busy to be on the campaign trail.  Unpopular presidents, in other words, let their fellow partisans run from him, hoping that the fortunes of the party overall will thereby improve.

But not Barack Obama.  In speech after speech, Obama has called out the Judases among the Democratic ranks, pointedly rebuking them for trying to abandon his brand.  On every count on which the Democrat candidates have tried to distance themselves from the poisonous Obama, Obama has reminded them of their staunch support for those policies that they now attempt to disown.  In a remarkable, and baffling, turn of events, the President seems to be aware of his own deep unpopularity -- Obama is a textbook narcissist, and must surely pore over every mention of his name in print -- and yet still refuses to let the rats in his party jump off of his ship.  They swim away in earnest, heads barely above water, but Titanic Captain B. H. Obama plucks them back up and lashes them to his down-going mast.

What is going on here?

The answer is counterintuitive, but simple: Obama wants the Democrats to lose.

Others, including Rush Limbaugh in June of this year, have touched on this speculation.  But, so far as I can tell, no one has yet gotten to the heart of the issue.  Obama, Rush suggests, wants the Democrats to lose in order to goad the Republicans into impeaching him, which, Obama calculates, will backfire because he’s black, leading to a Democratic sweep in 2016.

I offer here a different explanation: Obama wants Democrats to lose because a solidly Republican Congress will allow him to step to the Pontius Pilate water bowl, wash his hands (with a dramatic flourish) of the whole business of politics, and start ruling in earnest by fiat.  We have already seen that, by executive order, Obama is going to issue green cards to some thirty-three millions Hispanics (read: future Democrats) as soon as the elections are over.  With a divided Congress, though, the president would have a much less plausible excuse for slipping into full dictatorial character.  Some Democrats would, one presumes, actually speak up for the democratic process, and insist that the president at least pretend to play by the rules.

But Obama hears the clock ticking.  Six years have gone by, and the American economy, though crippled, is still intact.  The food stamp rolls, though expanding exponentially, have still not swamped GDP.  The Federal Reserve, though printing money faster than it ever has, has still not flushed the value from the greenback.  Attempts to incite racial revolutions in Florida and Missouri stalled because of the pesky persistence of facts.  Israel, far from being enslaved to its Muslim neighbors, rightfully ignores Obama, and defends herself more forcefully than ever.  The EPA still does not have the power to socialize the means of energy production in the United States.  Oil and natural gas still flow out of the ground, enriching American companies.  Obamacare has not yet killed off American medical research and advancement.  And Christians still do not have to choose in mass numbers between jail and Christ.

There is precious little time to bring all of these aims to fruition.  With the Congress firmly set against him in November -- an eventuality that Obama is working assiduously to realize -- Obama will be able to stand on the parapet and plead that, what he now does as king, he does in the name of country.

Obama wants the Democrats to lose.

Jason Morgan is a PhD candidate in East Asian History at the University of Wisconsin.