Barack Obama is not a happy man.

In fact, he's fretting, getting all wound up about Joe Biden's re-election prospects.

It ought to be something he shouldn't care about, having nothing but contempt for Biden.

But something else is going on.

According to Fox News:

Former President Barack Obama privately met with President Biden on at least two occasions and expressed concern that he could lose the 2024 election, according to a report.

A new report from TIME Magazine claimed that Obama met with Biden last June to deliver a warning about his re-election chances. Obama allegedly advised Biden to become more aggressive and make the upcoming presidential race a referendum on Trump.

During a private lunch, Obama told Biden his campaign was unstable, persuading unhappy voters would be a challenge and defeating Trump would be more difficult than 2020, according to a Democrat briefed on the discussion.

While he believed at the time that Biden had taken his advice to heart, Obama allegedly saw little improvement over the next six months.

What?

It sounds like Obama is Biden's minder, hall monitor, parent, and boss, which is what voters have been suspecting all along, given Biden's strange insistance at public events that he does what he is told.

Fox, citing TIME, reported that when Obama was forced to come over there again, it went like this:

"This time, Obama's message was more urgent. He expressed concern the re-election campaign was behind schedule in building out its field operations and bottlenecked by Biden's insistence on relying upon an insular group of advisers clustered in the West Wing, according to the same Democratic insider," TIME noted.

Which doesn't say much for Biden now that a story like this got out.

Obama gave Biden an 'F' and detention on his latest term paper, and called for improvement. Or, after ignoring the old toad for much of his presidency, Obama now is stepping in as Biden's backseat driver, telling him he's about to drive the car off a cliff.

Given how out-of-it Biden is, firmly convinced that he's presidential material even in his dotage, it's got to be a good slap of the towel to an old fool who doesn't know where the locker is. Obama may not be the smartest-ever president, but he certainly is wily and in touch with more voters than Biden is even if he has nothing of value to tell Biden about what to give voters. And unlike Biden, he is canny enough to see a train wreck coming.

What a wretched situation, given that Biden is supposed to be a president of sorts.

What it tells us is that Obama knows Donald Trump is going to blow Biden out of the water on Election Day and is stepping forward to try to stop that from happening. While Obama has always had contempt for Biden, having reportedly told a senator: "Don't underestimate Joe's ability to 'f*** things up," he still sees that he has some dog in this fight to prop old weekend-at-Biden's up for a second term and it must eat at him. He knows that Trump will dismantle every element of Biden's legacy, undoing all his executive orders and other damage wrought during Biden's miserable presidential term. He also knows that Biden has no legacy of his own, having followed Obama's program to the max, which means that what comes down under Trump is the House that Obama Built.

No wonder he's turned into such a fretting busybody. The pathetic puppet he's put in as a placeholder has gone and messed the whole thing up. "Don't underestimate Joe's ability to f*** things up" has got to be all he's thinking about as Biden's falling poll numbers keep him up at night. He's fretting. He's having nightmares.

Good.

Image: My Hobo Soul, via Wikimedia Commons // CC BY-SA 2.0 DEED