Barack Obama says he’ll be campaigning for Democrats in swing states in the run-up to the November 8 midterms. And to him we say: Go ahead. Make our day.

We say this because we’ve seen the empirical proof. When it comes to elections, Obama has always been a one-trick self-promoting pony. He invariably finds a way to make himself look cooler and smarter and more appealing than the guy he wants you to vote for.

Take his recent appearance on the “Pod Save America” podcast, in which he cautioned his fellow Democrats to steer clear of their beloved cancel culture and stop being “buzzkills.”

“My family, my kids, work that gives me satisfaction, having fun,” Obama said on Friday, referring to the sorts of pleasant things that Democrats don’t seem to be able to talk about. “Hell, not being a buzzkill. And sometimes Democrats are [buzzkills]. Sometimes people just want to not feel as if they are walking on eggshells, and they want some acknowledgment that life is messy and that all of us, at any given moment, can say things the wrong way, make mistakes.”

Now he tells them. Obama has never been a defender of free expression, and it’s no coincidence that cancel culture got its start during his administration. Beyond that, Obama is the ultimate identity politician, even though he’s now warning his fellow Democrats against it.

“I think where we get into trouble sometimes is where we try to suggest that some groups are more — because they historically have been victimized more — that somehow they have a status that’s different than other people and we’re going around scolding folks if they don’t use exactly the right phrase,” Obama said. “Or that identity politics becomes the principle lens through which we view our various political challenges.”

Obama wasn’t finished doling out advice, though. He also counseled Democrats to dial back their other-worldly obsession with Donald Trump, who currently resides rent-free in their heads. “The thing that I think sometimes we seem to make a mistake on is [Trump’s] behavior can be so outrageous, and now, folks who try to copy him and his outrageous behaviors [are] getting a lot of attention,” Obama opined of what Joe Biden calls the “Ultra MAGA” Republicans.

“And so we join that game,” Obama added. “And we spend enormous amounts of time and energy and resources pointing out the latest crazy thing he said, or how rude or mean some of these Republican candidates behaved. That’s probably not something that, in the minds of most voters, overrides their basic interests: Can I pay the rent? What are gas prices? How am I dealing with child care?”

Here we have to agree with Obama: Democrats are stuck on stupid. Donald Trump isn’t on the ballot, and yet the party of Joe Biden and Nancy Pelosi can’t stop talking about him. Of course, what else do they have to talk about? Inflation is still top of mind for more Americans than any other issue, and the Democrats are undeniably responsible for it. Put another way: Does anyone really believe that Biden’s Orwellian Inflation Reduction Act will actually reduce inflation? Of course not. Nor does anyone believe what Biden said in Los Angeles last week: “If Republicans win, inflation’s going to get worse. It’s that simple.”

Desperate times thus call for desperate measures, and the Democrats are indeed getting desperate. That brief, media-induced boomlet of Biden enthusiasm has long since crested, and Republicans across the country are again resurgent. From here on out it’ll be the economy, stupid.

As for Obama’s leaden touch, just think about the wreckage of his eight years in office and the cataclysmic downsizing of the Democrat Party he brought about: a net loss of 947 state legislative seats, 63 House seats, 11 Senate seats, and 13 governorships.

We’ve long compared the Obama presidency to a neutron bomb: a weapon that wiped out the Democrats’ human capital while keeping its physical structures intact. But perhaps Stuxnet is a more apt comparison because the party was kept unaware of the damage being done by his presidency until it was too late.

Put bluntly: With friends like Obama, Democrats don’t need a proctologist.

In this election cycle, history will once again show that the only person Barack Obama ever helped elect was himself. And that’s the way it is with narcissists: There’s no Transitive Property of Obama. And just because he can sell himself to dullard Democrats doesn’t mean he can sell them to the rest of us.