It was May 2013 when President Obama first talked about his wish to “go Bulworth.” The reference is to a 1998 film in which a compromised senator, having arranged to have himself killed so that his daughter could collect his insurance, is free for the first time in his sad, shabby lifespan to speak his unfettered and luminous mind. The time came for Obama late in 2014, when having lost all he could — both houses of Congress and many state governments — he had no more to lose by losing his bearings and getting lost in a world all his own.

The first sign that he gave of being unmoored from reality was his insistence that the votes that counted in the midterm elections were those not in fact cast by the people who refrained from voting. He seemed to believe they were all in his corner and that their silence spoke volumes on his and his party’s behalf. He started to swagger on the theory that if he acted like a winner, people would think that he had won and treat him accordingly.