Alternate headline: “Confirmed: Obama all but admits that Boehner will be Speaker next year.” This is vintage Barry O in a number of ways: (1) The giggle-worthy salute to “lean government” as a way of framing himself as a centrist pragmatist (hey, it convinced David Brooks during the election); (2) the lame straw man about the GOP having proposed no ideas of its own (Boehner and Cantor are firing back on Twitter); (3) the endless bashing of the conservative villain du jour, which today meant Boehner even though, er, most voters don’t know who he is; and (4) of course, of course, the more-in-sorrow-than-in-anger lament about the politics of fear forever being practiced by those darned wingnuts. Speaking of which, go see what the DNC was up to today. Passing ObamaCare hasn’t gotten their base to turn out — despite the left’s assurance that passing ObamaCare was the only way to get them to turn out — so now it’s on to Plan B, i.e. terrifying them with stories about how Rand Paul’s going to bring about the apocalypse or whatever. But then, really, what do you want them to say at this point? They’ve messed up so badly that Republican voters now outnumber Democratic ones for the first time in 80 years. In fact, Obama couldn’t even draw a capacity crowd for this speech despite the fact that it was delivered on a college campus. They’re out of rhetorical ammo. It’s kitchen sink time.

Exit question: Should a guy who’s still giving almost the exact same stump speech he gave two years ago really be framing the choice in November as one between “past” and “future”? Click the image to watch.