Many Americans suspect that Barack Obama has been running a shadow administration for most, if not all, of the last three and a half years. He didn’t trust Joe Biden not to “f*** things up,” so he’s been pulling the strings and making the real decisions while the old puppet shuffled out to be the face of Obama’s third term.

We all saw Obama help Biden off the stage a couple of months ago, even if the “fact-checkers” told us they were just being pals. As it turns out, that walk off the stage was stagecraft. It was the symbolic version of what Obama was really doing behind the scenes — engineering a coup against his former sidekick.

So, when the former president took the Democratic National Convention stage late last night in his adopted hometown of Chicago to deliver a stemwinder, it felt more like he was stealing the whole convention. Yes, Angry Joe flipped on a TV Land rerun Monday night (before heading out on vacation), and yes, Komrade Kamala will accept the nomination Thursday night, but this is Barack Obama’s party.

Maybe Kamala Harris knows that, which is why she skipped last night to hold a rally at Fiserv Forum in Milwaukee — which just happens to be the location of the Republican National Convention last month.

Like Biden, Obama didn’t start speaking until after 11 p.m. Eastern, and it was largely because the night was chock-full of every Democrat rising star or turncoat Republican organizers could find. (No one cares what former Representative Adam Kinzinger thinks, though former White House Press Secretary Stephanie Grisham landed a few blows against her old boss, Donald Trump.)

Notably, Barack also followed his wife, Michelle — the woman of color millions of Democrats wanted to pursue the nomination instead of Harris. Mrs. Obama certainly played that race card, too. Railing against Trump for daring to talk about illegal aliens taking black jobs, she asked, “Who’s going to tell him that the job he’s currently seeking might just be one of those ‘black jobs’?”

Whatever happened to her 2016 admonition that “when they go low, we go high”? It was never true, of course, but someone should play that video for her.

Speaking of going low, Michelle laid out what will become the centerpiece of Democrat and Leftmedia strategy to ensure Harris beats Trump. “It’s his same old con,” she complained of Trump’s campaign plan. “Doubling down on ugly, misogynistic, racist lies as a substitute for real ideas and solutions that will actually make people’s lives better.” As usual, that’s just projection.

I could go after a lot more in Michelle Obama’s remarks, but two other comments bear highlighting. “No one has a monopoly on what it means to be an American,” she said. “No one.” This is from the wife of the guy whose broken-record line is about the “right side of history,” as if he does indeed get to define the word American. “We have a familiar feeling that’s been buried too deep for far too long,” the former first lady also said. “You know what I’m talking about: It’s the contagious power of hope.” She added, “Hope is making a comeback.” Not if Democrats win, it’s not.

Most notable for Michelle might be the two words she never once uttered: “Joe Biden.”

So, back to Barack Obama. He, too, was guilty of projection. “The other side knows it’s easier to play on people’s fears and cynicism,” he said. It’s certainly true that Trump behaves more like a Democrat than he exudes Ronald Reagan’s trademark optimism, but Democrats have been masters of fear and cynicism for decades.

“They will tell you that government is inherently corrupt,” Obama added, as if his administration didn’t sic the IRS on Tea Party groups or run illegal guns to Mexican drug cartels or try to rig the 2016 election with phony allegations of Russian collusion. As if his party didn’t spend Trump’s entire four years siccing the deep state on the president in an attempted coup and as if his party hasn’t rigged the justice system against Trump just for the utterly cynical but great branding of running a “former prosecutor” against a “convicted felon.”

Then there was Obama’s obvious penis joke. Noting Trump’s “weird obsession with crowd sizes,” he looked down at his hands and gestured smaller. The crowd roared with approval at the intended double entendre. But it was just minutes after Michelle Obama had lectured about pettiness being “unpresidential” and in the same sentence as Barack disparaging Trump’s “childish nicknames.” Nothing riles up a crowd like brazen hypocrisy.

As for the guy whose wheelchair he just pushed off the cliff, he said, “History will remember Joe Biden as a president who defended democracy at a moment of great danger. I am proud to call him my president but even prouder to call him my friend.”

Julius Ceasar called Brutus a friend, too.

“The torch has been passed,” Obama said, implying that it had been passed from him to Harris, whom he seems to forget has been the vice president for the last three and a half years.

“Don’t boo, vote,” he admonished the crowd at one point. That’s a regular refrain for him, but make no mistake: Now that Democrats have pushed Biden to the ash heap of history, they will do everything in their power to rally their voters (and their “voters”) to deny Trump a second term. Don’t underestimate the power of Obama charisma to motivate their base, the Leftmedia to tilt coverage toward the “inspiring” woman of color, and the backroom ballot counters to make sure tallies are just where they need to be.

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