So Michelle Obama's got a coming-of-age memoir, titled Becoming, coming out?  To be released just a few days after November's midterms?  The ones in which Democrats expect to launch their Blue Wave and retake the House and the Senate?  Thomas Lifson, writing in today's American Thinker, couldn't be more on target in writing that the book signals that she's running for president.

What we are seeing here is not just a memoir for a million-dollar payday, as the Obamas have been so adept at gaining. (Michelle, after all, did make a heap from her book on vegetables as she tried to micromanage what Americans eat).  This one is more than a memoir: it's a marketing of herself, her persona, as a "narrative" for something bigger, which in her case is a crack at the presidency.  You don't win the presidency by talking about your ideas if your ideas (which are socialist) are unpopular.  You win by talking about yourself.

Releasing the memoir with this calculated timing precisely mirrors strategy and tactics Barack Obama employed to win elections during his career.  Apparently, Valerie Jarrett and the other Obamatons over at the Kalorama mansion, oh, so quiet all these months, have not been idle in plotting out this new "narrative."  Michelle's new book has Team Obama's fingerprints all over it.

Just take a look at what Obama did with his book strategy for winning higher office.  Here's the first instance from Wikipedia:

Dreams from My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance (1995) is a memoir by Barack Obama, who was elected as U.S. President in 2008. It explores events of his early years, up until his entry into law school in 1988. Obama published the memoir in July 1995, when he was starting his political campaign for Illinois Senate.

And then here's the second one from Wikipedia:

The Audacity of Hope: Thoughts on Reclaiming the American Dream is the second book written by then-Senator Barack Obama. In the fall of 2006 it became number one on both the New York Times and Amazon.com bestsellers lists after Obama was endorsed by Oprah Winfrey. In the book, Obama expounds on many of the subjects that became part of his 2008 campaign for the presidency. The book advance from the publisher totalled $1.9 million contracted for three books. Obama announced his ultimately successful presidential campaign on February 10, 2007, a little more than three months after the book's release.

The timing was right there in both instances, as is the timing in Michelle Obama's book. The Obamas know what works, and they are sticking to the formula.

Given that Michelle Obama's Princeton thesis was barely literate, it makes one wonder who is helping her with the writing.  Is it Bill Ayers, as Jack Cashill pretty well showed in Obama's case?  Or is it someone else dispatched from the war rooms at Kalorama?  One wonders. And while we are on the topic, does the fact that Obama still maintains the Kalorama mansion, despite his gallivanting around the world like a billionaire, as his operatives plot back home, say anything about new presidential ambitions?  Via Michelle Obama? It would seem so.

As Lifson notes, the Democrats are in bad shape, at least if they run on policies.  But if they can galvanize the black vote, which is what they did with Obama, they are in a position to win.  They are sure they can't win if they don't.  What would be more logical than for Michelle Obama to write an identity politics book, in first person, Oprah-style, as a backdrop "narrative" to galvanize those voters? The Obamas always were about "narrative" as a means of concealing their policy objectives by promoting their personas. Obama's "mind-meld," and right hand man, after all, was fiction writer and major Ben Rhodes. Ol' Ben knew more than anyone about creating "narratives."

What's more, the Democratic Party is run by gerontocrats, meaning that the path is wide open for an outsider in its next presidential contest.  They don't really have anyone viable otherwise, and they have certainly noted the Trump example. The Obamas have a formula for winning the presidency, and obviously, they are using it. Barack Obama succeeded repeatedly in employing this memoirs-of-identity model as a prelude to more.

What we should look to now is Michelle Obama making a major speech for the Democrats, which was Barack Obama's next step in getting out there in front of the Democratic pack, and then taking the lead. Look next Michelle Obama's big speech. After the book, it's coming.