In the WSJ’s new section, Free Expressions, Jack Butler discusses the nuances of America’s 44th president not attending this year’s White House Correspondence dinner. Nonetheless, somehow Obama managed to get the message wrong. By the time he issued his carefully calibrated statement on X, we did know things about the alleged shooter. Several news outlets had reported on the attempted assassination by Sunday morning because the alleged shooter had sent a note to his family shortly before his attack began.

The shooter appears to have immersed himself in the deranged left-wing world of Bluesky.

As many Americans did that Sunday morning, Barack Obama awoke to that same information. If he had access to that info, why would he have mentioned it at all? Yet, he did. Indeed, why?

At a certain point along the timeline of such events, asserting uncertainty can resemble certainty. Here, it looks like an attempt to confuse things. Or, perhaps, to banish the shooter from the broader left-wing universe.

Obama has provided little reason to think well of his post-presidential civic interventions. What possible reason could his adoring public think well of this partisan actor after leaving the White House? The degree and nature of his involvement seem abnormal. Why would he live permanently in DC during Joe Biden’s tenure? For example, just this last month, Obama insisted a plan he had previously opposed was now essential “not just for the commonwealth but for our entire country, so congressional Republicans don’t have an unfair advantage in the coming midterms.”

Obama’s remarks to Butler have always been jarring. He was a master of the art of presenting momentary partisan advantage as some kind of higher calling. All opposition was therefore fundamentally wrongheaded.

Obama, for all his gifted political and personal achievements, has not fared as well when campaigning for others.

Democrats, lost hundreds of elected offices during his time in office.

However hesitant Mr. Obama may or may not initially have been to support Kamala Harris in the 2024 election, he ultimately went all-in for her. During the campaign, Mr. Obama upbraided black men for withholding their support. None of this worked out as he hoped.

During Obama’s eight years in office, the Democrats have lost more House, Senate, state legislative, and gubernatorial seats than under any other president.

Obama’s most conspicuous political failure was his governing in a way that made the nation receptive to Donald Trum.

Obama contributed to a culturewide sense that the nation’s elites, political and cultural, were at war with nonelites and with America itself, engendering a reaction. And with his pen and phone, he opened the door for the exercises of executive power for which the left now criticizes Mr. Trump.

Continues Mr. Butler: Barack Obama is not going anywhere. Perhaps he doesn’t even realize that he created the political situation he now believes requires his sustained presence.

Some on the left will remember Obama. So this is how we ended up with Donald Trump?