Slowly, very slowly, prominent Democrats are starting to admit the obvious: that Barack Obama's presidency has been a disaster for their party, leading it to depths unmatched in the last 90 years.  The figure of over 1,000 legislative seats lost to the Republicans is but one marker.  The absence of a bench, leaving the party's congressional leadership with an average age in the seventies, is a serious problem for a political faction dependent on the youth vote.

The latest Democrat to tell the hard truth while Obama is hiding from public gaze in the South Seas colonial domain of France – an odd choice for a dedicated anti-colonialist who speaks no French (or any other foreign language, for that matter – is Keith Ellison, of all people.  He is the deputy party chair of the Democrats, whose responsibilities include the ailing health of the Dems.

Cameron Cawthorne of the Free Beacon reports:

Rep. Keith Ellison (D., Minn.) spoke Wednesday at the University of Minnesota, where he said that former President Barack Obama deserved some of the blame for the Democrats collapsing in 2016.

"Speaking of presidential politics, was President Obama responsible for some of the failures of 2016 and if so, how?" one of the moderators asked.

"Yeah, he was," Ellison said.

Ellison, who serves as the deputy chairman of the Democratic National Committee, said Obama could have been a better party leader.

"I totally voted for many things that he supported … But Barack Obama could have been a better party leader, and I think that the fact that he wasn't has put his legacy in jeopardy," Ellison said.

Ellison said Obama's legacy will not revolve around the building that will be constructed to hold his presidential papers in Chicago.

Of course, no Democrat will dwell on the many other failures of Obama's presidency, including the disastrous Iran deal, Obamacare's implosion, the stagnant economic growth, and aggravation of racial tensions to their worst levels since the days of segregation, and maybe even since the Civil War.  That remains for historians, and it will take a new generation to honestly evaluate his legacy thanks to the utter politicization of academia.

But at least self-interested Democrats are daring to assess some blame for their own problems caused by Obama.