CHOOSE THE FORM OF YOUR DESTRUCTOR: The Amazing Story of How Trolling by Obama Gave Us Trump.

Read the whole thing, including this:

I don’t see how being held up to public ridicule by Obama can possibly be discounted as something that convinced Trump to run for president. In fact, it is very much in sync with what we know about Trump.

Now, did he expect to win when he launched his campaign? I don’t think so. There was an interview by an early member of Team Trump that gave the distinct impression that he wanted a credible showing as a springboard to more reality television.

Who else didn’t think he’d win against Hillary, and was using his longshot election bid as a springboard to gain additional notoriety? Oh yeah, this once-unknown politician:

Soon-to-be-candidate Obama, then an Illinois senator, was thinking about turning down an invitation to speak at a big health care conference sponsored by the progressive group Families USA [in January 2007], when two aides, Robert Gibbs and Jon Favreau, hit on an idea that would make him appear more prepared and committed than he actually was at the moment.

Why not just announce his intention to pass universal health care by the end of his first term?…

“We needed something to say,” recalled one of the advisers involved in the discussion. “I can’t tell you how little thought was given to that thought other than it sounded good. So they just kind of hatched it on their own. It just happened. It wasn’t like a deep strategic conversation.”…

The candidate jumped at it. He probably wasn’t going to get elected anyway, the team concluded. Why not go big?

Why not indeed? The result was a hollowing out of the Democrats’ backbench due to Obamacare’s deep unpopularity, giving the Democrats very few options for 2016, except for a remarkably flawed retread.