So Obama can’t get the GOP to self-destruct or Democrats to fall in line. And he can’t get Democrats to fall enough in line behind an executive solution to make the GOP self-destruct. In other words; the Obama presidency is basically over. Hope it was good for you, too.

The Obama agenda is spent. With the balance of power unlikely to tip in a Democratic direction in the fall, he’s unlikely to put more big scores on the board in the final two years of his presidency.

Whatever revisions it faces in the coming years, the massive reform of the health care system in his first term is probably the most significant alteration of the American state by a Democratic president since Lyndon Johnson’s “Great Society.” His drawdown in Iraq was necessary no matter how unhappy that country has been ever since our invasion. And while his foreign policy has generally left chaos and disorder behind it — see: Libya, Egypt — it’s an obvious improvement on his predecessor’s.

There’s not much left to do other than to find a few more bric-à-brac “legacy achievements.”