“If I could make an arrangement where I had a stand-in, [and he] had an earpiece in, and I was … looking through the stuff, then I could sort of deliver the lines, but somebody else was doing all the talking and ceremony — I’d be fine with that.”

That was Barack Obama last November 30, fantasizing about a third term with “The Late Show’s” obsequious Stephen Colbert, while at the same time peddling Part I of his third memoir — a 768-page, $45 doorstop he claims to have written “primarily for young people.”

But a stand-in with an earpiece? That’s kind of eerie, given Joe Biden’s condition.

And sure enough, there was Obama earlier this week, on “The Ezra Klein Show,” telling us that his boy Joe is simply picking up where his own administration left off.

“I think that what we’re seeing now,” said Obama, “is Joe and the administration are essentially finishing the job. And I think it’ll be an interesting test. Ninety percent of the folks who were there in my administration, they are continuing and building on the policies we talked about.”

“Finishing the job” sounds about right. Just four months into his term, Biden seems bent on delivering to our Republic the coup de grace, after Obama’s rifle squad spent eight years filling it full of lead.

It’s clear that our 44th president is still obsessed with our 45th. Otherwise, he’d be able to stop talking about him. And Obama seems especially sensitive about his economic record versus that of Donald Trump. Those policies of mine, he insists, are what built the economy that Trump took credit for:

Now I would argue, and I think a lot of economists that I know would suggest, that mostly that had nothing to do with Donald Trump’s policies, and mostly had to do with the fact that we had put the economy on a footing where he essentially just continued the longest peacetime recovery and sustained job growth in American history. But if you’re the average voter you’re kind of thinking, Well, you know, looks like Republican policies are working for me to some degree, which probably explains why Trump was able to make some inroads — modest, overstated but real inroads — among non-white voters who were feeling like, what, I’m working and making decent money, and things feel pretty good. So that clouds what I think would have been a more impactful shift in political views towards Democrats as a result of my presidency.

What Obama can’t seem to get through his head, though, is that his policies were always less popular than he was personally. For whatever reason, people tended to like Barack Obama more than the things he was trying to do. Just the opposite was true for Donald Trump: They loved his America First policies, but occasionally loathed his intemperate tweets.

But as for that “more impactful political shift” Obama says is clouding his legacy, that’s quite a statement coming from the Neutron Bomb of the Democrat Party — the guy who annihilated his side’s human capital without so much as scratching the buffet table. Think about it: Since Obama left office, the two Democrats who’ve gotten the nomination (Hillary and Joe) are dinosaurs, and the one who twice got cheated out of the nomination (Bernie) is also a dinosaur. Where’s the bench of Barack Obama’s Democrat Party? Where’s their version of Mike Pence or Ron DeSantis or Kristi Noem or Tim Scott or Tom Cotton or Pete Ricketts or Kim Reynolds?

Gavin Newsom? Andrew Cuomo? Please.

Barack Obama was in it for himself, first and foremost. Not for his party. And the numbers resoundingly bear it out. During his eight years in office, Obama oversaw a colossal net loss of 947 state legislative seats, 63 House seats, 11 Senate seats, and 13 governorships.

Nothing he says or does now can undo that inconvenient truth.