Far from content living his golden years on the $400,000 speech and lecture circuit of other former presidents, President Obama has been busy with clawing back his old power.  He's actually covertly plotting to oust his democratically elected successor, President Trump, vowing to his associates to "rip him a new one" in the 2018 midterm elections.  Seems he's not all that interested in watching his younger daughter grow up.

That's the word from DCWhispers, which reports that Obama's Kalorama mansion, in the heart of the capital's toniest district, is the center of significant comings and goings among the Obamatons, who, led by his consigliere, Valerie Jarrett, are busily raising funds for the project as Obama eggs them on.

The Obama Machine has in recent months been raking in tens of millions in preparation for a significant 2018 [m]idterm war effort – primarily through an LLC called Citizen 44, run by Paulette Aniskoff, a longtime Obama staffer who answers directly to Jarrett.  Citizen 44's primary purpose is to keep the 2008 and 2012 Obama campaign machine intact, continue to build up its state-by-state influence, and use it as an election entity that will rival the influence of the DNC itself.  In short, any Democrat of importance who hopes to rise in rank will have to kiss the ring of Citizen 44 first.

Want to know who the leader of the resistance is?  This is the leader of the resistance.

Knowing how Obama's campaign organization was run, with its slipshod accounting of foreign cash infusions and phony claims to be running on small-dollar donations, it's probable that this operation is as shady as all the other ones.  In fact, it is all the other ones.  DCWhispers reports that it comprises almost entirely Obama's leftover and not dead campaign apparatus.

It's a disgusting picture for any ex-presidency.

What we are looking at right now is a third-world coup-plotting effort, done under legal pretenses (just as Hugo Chávez did everything under legal pretenses), to oust a sitting president.  It's unprecedented.  When have we ever seen an ex-president acting like this, spending his post-presidency determined to consolidate and continue his rule, if not the conventional way, then the subterranean way?  Did Nixon do that?  Did LBJ?  Did Jimmy Carter?  Heck, did either of the George Bushes?  Imagine Jerry Ford doing that!

What we have here is the creepy specter of an embittered ex-president trying to restore his legacy after angry voters elected someone else who would dismantle the unpopular doings of his administration.  It almost sounds like a plot for one of the better television shows.

It's also a nefarious thing for the U.S. republic, signaling that the old era of political pendulum swings and peaceful transitions of power are now over.  We now have the specter of ex-presidents in the shadows openly plotting to oust their successors.  It's happening because Obama doesn't think he should be out of power – repeatedly during his administration, he would make little references to his willingness to serve a third term.  It's a leftist thing, a belief that "history is on our side" and "history will absolve me," and progress in the direction the left decrees is "inevitable" that likely makes him think he's entitled to rule forever.

And don't dismiss that his lip-curdling contempt for President Trump is part of it, too.  Get a load of these early descriptions of encounters between Obama and Trump, dating to 2011.  Obama mocked Trump at a press correspondents' dinner, and Trump refused to go along with the then-president's kingly jokes.  At that time, the press toadies were saying "Obama ripped Trump a new one," which is the dynamic we see now.  Trump, refusing to humor Obama by laughing at his jokes, instead ran for president in the aftermath...and won.  That has to burn Obama, who must remember the incident and how it triggered his successor, and now he is bitterly plotting his revenge.

It's tinhorn dictator stuff, and it needs to be called out.