The Obama administration has managed an interesting trick. The combination of the disintegration of Iraq, the crisis on our southern border, and the “loss” of the IRS e-mails allows the Obama administration to achieve the goals of disengaging from Iraq at all costs, maximizing the constituency for (and future size of ) any amnesty, and putting off the investigation into the IRS targeting of political opponents. And the best part is that the Obama administration can do all of this by not doing much of anything and just letting events take their course.

There will be some kind of price to be paid in popular support, but Obama is probably already near the floor of his popularity in the Real Clear Politics presidential-job-approval average. It would take either a recession or some kind of foreign-policy or national-security event that directly affected large numbers of Americans (stuff that is just in the news isn’t going to get it done) for Obama’s job approval to fall much further.

I suspect that there is something else driving the Obama administration’s confidence. My sense is that quite a few people on the left are thinking of this election as taking place in a year that doesn’t count, in places that don’t count (West Virginia? Arkansas?), and where the votes are being cast by an idiosyncratic midterm electorate that shouldn’t count. We’ll get them in 2016 when the real America will be voting.