Obama spoke in a wide-ranging interview with former senior advisor and now CNN commentator David Axelrod for the Democratic political operative's Axe Files podcast. The interview was released by CNN on Monday.

President Barack Obama, the Democratic leader who presided over the decimation of his party, now claims that he would have beaten Donald Trump if he had a chance to run for a third term. The problem is that Hillary Clinton ran as Obama’s third term, with the president’s active support and was rejected. That fact has yet to dawn on our narcissist-in-chief, who proclaimed, as the Los Angeles Times reported :

"You know, I am confident in this vision because I'm confident that if I -- if I had run again and articulated it, I think I could've mobilized a majority of the American people to rally behind it," Obama said. His comments were part of a wider discussion of what he called "ugly" sentiments of racism and xenophobia that surfaced during the 2016 campaign. Obama repeated his assertion that Clinton faced a double standard as a woman, which put her at a disadvantage. But he also said a kind of complacency set in that made the Clinton campaign too cautious and thus unable to get its message out sufficiently. "If you think you're winning, then you have a tendency, just like in sports, maybe to play it safer," Obama said.

Did Hillary Clinton face a double standard as a woman when you beat her in 2008, or was she just a bad candidate who would have never made it to the national stage except for the fact that her last name was Clinton? The irony is that Trump’s winning campaign was run by a woman, Kellyanne Conway.

Add the gender excuse to the list of excuses which include Russian hackers, FBI director James Comey, and the Electoral College. Racism and xenophobia? How does Obama explain that despite a personal appeal to black voters that if they didn’t turn out for Hilary it would be a personal insult to him, black voters stayed home in significant numbers? As NBC reported, Obama pleaded with black voters:

"There's no such thing as a vote that doesn't matter. It all matters," Obama told the crowd at the Phoenix Awards dinner, hosted by the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation. "I will consider it a personal insult, an insult to my legacy, if this community lets down its guard and fails to activate itself in this election," the president said.

Yet the act is that racist and xenophobic Trump did better among blacks and Hispanics than Mitt Romney did in 2012 with a message of real hope and real change:

Trump claimed 29 percent of the Hispanic vote on Tuesday compared to Romney's 27 percent in 2012. With blacks, exit polls show Trump claimed 8 percent of the vote to the previous Republican nominee's 6 percent….Clinton underperformed in efforts to match the historic levels of support that Obama achieved. The first African American president carried 93 percent of the black vote against Romney. Clinton came in five points below him against Trump. With Hispanics, Obama garnered 71 percent support in 2012. Clinton on Tuesday claimed 65 percent.

Was it black and Hispanic males, Mr. President, who could not bring themselves to vote for a woman? Or was it Trump’s appeal to black voters trapped in cities ruled by liberal Democrats for decades that they had nothing to lose? Obama would argue that if he had run again, the numbers among minorities would have been different, yet the fact remains that in every election he wasn’t on the ballot, but told voters his policies were, Democrats lost badly – in 2010, 2014, and 2016. Blacks in particular ignored his personal appeal to them and voters in general rejected his policies which Hillary said she would protect and build upon.

The New York Post has documented Barack Obama’s destruction of the Democratic Party, suggesting tongue-in-cheek that perhaps Obama was a GOP plant:

As President Obama concludes his reign of error, his party is smaller, weaker and ricketier than it has been since at least the 1940s. Behold the tremendous power that Democrats have frittered away -- from January 2009 through the aftermath of Election Day -- thanks to Obama and his ideas: Democrats surrendered the White House to political neophyte Donald J. Trump. US Senate seats slipped from 55 to 46, down 16 percent. US House seats fell from 256 to 194, down 24 percent. Democrats ran the Senate and House in 2009. Next year, they will control neither. Governorships slid from 28 to 16, down 43 percent. State legislatures (both chambers) plunged from 27 to 14, down 48 percent Trifectas (states with Democrat governors and both legislative chambers) cratered from 17 to 6, down 65 percent.

Obama is right that perhaps Team Clinton was complacent and overconfident and didn’t practice the retail politics he was so good at, and might have done better by just showing up in more places, not visiting Wisconsin at all, for example. Yet the fact remains that Donald Trump made inroads into key parts of the Democratic constituency, while reassembling the Reagan Democrats, building a groundswell among the “bitter clingers” Obama despised and the “deplorable” Hillary Clinton mocked. Yes, there were angry white males, as Bill Clinton suggests, but there were also angry blacks and Hispanics angry at being treated as voting blocs, not individuals in need of jobs and hope for a better life for their children.

Michelle Obama says she has lost hope, but not as much as the citizens of Chicago, Obama’s hometown, plagued with drugs, crime, decaying schools and over 700 murders this year. More than Hillary’s emails and her selling her office to fund the Clinton Foundation, voters rejected the soaring premiums and deductibles and declining quality of health care under ObamaCare. In states like Michigan, Ohio, and Pennsylvania, they rejected your war on energy. While you and your party talked about climate change and transgendered restrooms, Trump and the GOP talked about jobs and secure borders.

They rejected your policies and the fruits thereof, Mr. President. They rejected you, and embraced Trump’s message of real hope and change. They wanted jobs, not taxes and regulations. Donald Trump would have beaten you too, Mr. President, perhaps by a bigger margin than he beat your legacy and Hillary Clinton.

Daniel John Sobieski is a freelance writer whose pieces have appeared in Investor’s Business Daily, Human Events, Reason Magazine and the Chicago Sun-Times among other publications.