The cynic in me is starting to seriously wonder whether President Obama wanted the recent Democratic rout so as to advance his own personal policy preferences.

The alternative is that he’s a blithering idiot.

Let’s look at the facts. Midterm elections are typically dominated by base turnout. In non-presidential years, most people tune out and the number who go to the polls is way, way below a majority of eligible voters. Thus, the election hinges upon, and is dominated by, those highly motivated individuals who turn out to elections regardless of the public mood. This leads to a long-held strategy of focusing, in such years, on the ideological base of your party, putting resources toward getting out their vote and dealing with their issues.

Obama, the DNC and his old personal organization OFA had other ideas this time around though. Their plan was to focus not on the reliable base voters but on the fringe voters who had turned out, often for the first time in their lives, to vote for Obama in 2008:

ABC News’ David Chalian reports: Democrats will be facing a restive and disgruntled electorate in six months as they attempt to hang on to their House and Senate majorities on Capitol Hill, but that isn’t stopping Barack Obama’s DNC and his hand-picked party chairman from keeping their ultimate goal, the president’s 2012 reelection effort, in sight as they roll out the party’s 2010 battle plan.

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Many Democrats on Capitol Hill have privately expressed concern about this strategy because it is not centered on turning out the tried-and-true midterm election voters the party will need at the polls in November to significantly mitigate the anticipated large number of losses in key congressional races around the country.

Chairman Kaine claimed that the campaigns are already positioned to reach those voters and that the DNC will assist in that effort, but that is not where the committee sees itself adding most value. The previously announced $50 million investment in the midterm races will be greatly focused on cultivating these first-time voters from 2008 who are more likely to be engaged in the next presidential election with Barack Obama’s name expected to be on the ballot than they are to be in this year’s midterm contests.

In a nutshell, the Obama faction wanted to spend precious resources in a tight election year not on voters likely to turn out, but on maintaining Obama’s relationship with sunshine voters who he’ll need in 2012.

If that strikes you as dangerous and narcissistic, you’re not the only one, and as the election loomed many establishment Dems got panicky:

The White House strategy is focused on an unprecedented effort to turn out the voters who cast their first ballots for Obama in 2008. The Democratic National Committee has pledged $30 million in voter turnout efforts this year, largely geared toward those first-time voters through Organizing for America, the outgrowth of Obama’s political operation.

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Old school Democrats, mostly affiliated with the labor movement and congressional campaigns, aren’t buying it. They don’t believe the DNC understands what the midterm electorate will really look like.

“The notion that first-time presidential voters will come out in an off year is limited,” said one veteran Democratic strategist closely aligned with labor unions. In 2006, massive efforts to turn out the Democratic base, coupled with a political wave, swept Democrats into power. “If only the party and operatives were focused on getting that turnout in hand before going for extra icing,” this strategist said, “they’d have a far tastier cake.”

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Democrats critical of the DNC’s strategy believe the committee is focused more on Obama’s 2012 re-election bid than on the party’s success in the midterms. From the White House perspective, that may be an understandable act of self-preservation, given how dismal the landscape looks for Democrats. But it’s not something Capitol Hill Democrats appreciate.

So who was right? It might not surprise you to learn it wasn’t the Obama faction:

Core Democratic groups stayed away in droves Tuesday, costing Democratic House candidates dearly at the polls.

Hispanics, African Americans, union members and young people were among the many core Democratic groups that turned out in large numbers in the 2008 elections, propelling Mr. Obama and Democratic House candidates to sizable victories. In 2010, turnout among these groups dropped off substantially, even below their previous midterm levels.

Voters under the age of 30 comprised 18 percent of the electorate in 2008 and nearly 13 percent in 2006 but only made up 11 percent of the electorate in 2010. The share of voters from union households dropped from 23 percent in 2006 and 21 percent in 2008 to 17 percent in 2010. African Americans made up 13 percent of the electorate in 2008 but fell to 10 percent in 2010. Such apathy likely cost the Democrats House seats as voters in each of these groups cast ballots for Democratic House candidates by at least 15 point margins.

The strategy, as you can see, was a dismal failure, and it helped contribute to the slaughter the Dems faced in the House this week. So at first glance, Obama would seem to be a truly terrible tactician.

Or… would he?

It all depends on who he needs to advance his agenda. What is that agenda?

Over the last two years, President Obama’s administration has been handing out huge sacks of cash to large corporate interests in the health care and automotive sectors, while refusing to reign in the financial sector robber barons who brought about the recession. In order to do this he needed a certain coalition consisting of pro-Detroit, pro-bankster, pro-health lobby Democrats to pass his legislation.

Said coalition is utterly in ruin now, of course, but he doesn’t need them anymore, as he now has other plans.

First, ‘Free Trade’:

In addition to education, another area where you can see the President and the Republicans in Congress agreeing is on the issue of trade. One of the first international figures Obama talked to on Election Day was the President of South Korea, and he assured him that the US was working on passing a free trade agreement between the two countries.

Obama and a few Republicans may agree, but I’d be hard-pressed to find any Democrats to join them, including the Blue Dogs. For all his obvious faults, Heath Shuler is a fair trader. So was the majority of the 111th House of Representatives, as evidenced by the vote on the Chinese currency bill, which had the support of 99 Republicans, most of whom remain in the House. A new report from Public Citizen shows that 205 Democratic and Republican candidates used fair trade and anti-outsourcing messaging in their election campaigns. Only 37 candidates campaigned as pro-NAFTA free traders, and half of them lost.

Gee, it’s a shame that so many Democrats who would have been potential impediments to this big free trade pact are suddenly out of the picture, isn’t it?

Nice priorities there too, negotiating a free trade pact on the day your hand-picked electoral strategy destroys your own political party.

What else is on the schedule? Gutting Social Security comes to mind:

With Republicans in no mood to launch a legislative attack on Social Security, there was nobody for Obama to make one of his grand comprises with. So, in February of this year, he issued an executive order creating his own anti-entitlement missile, the panel that quickly became known as the “cat food” commission, harkening back to the pre-Social Security days when many of the elderly where reduced to eating cat food.

Obama’s trick was to conjure up a political demand for the gutting of entitlements when no serious movement in that direction existed in the Congress. The commission route allowed him to concoct a majority right-wing constituency in a bottle, so to speak, by weighting the membership with pro-corporate players.

No one doubts that the panel is rigged to recommend cuts that Democrats (and a few Republicans) would be prepared to fight tooth and nail if proposed by the GOP. Blood would flow in the halls of the House and Senate, and in the end the assailants would likely lose. But by packaging the poison in a commission, Obama is allowed to behave as if the entitlement debate has oozed from the ether, demanding to be made manifest.

The only thing I’d add to that excellent synopsis is that, after the election, Congress now has a slew of crazy, fire-breathing anti-entitlement Republicans and Tea Party maniacs to back his play and aid the triangulation.

In review: over the last two years, Obama’s agenda has been tilted toward handing out giant sacks of cash to large corporate interests traditionally aligned with Democratic pols (autos and healthcare) or neutral to them (finance). Republicans could be expected to oppose said efforts on simple zero-sum game grounds, and so he required a Dem coalition to pass his bailouts.

Now he wants to move on to handing huge sacks of cash to traditionally Republican interests (free traders) while gutting entitlements, which Dems would at least half-heartedly oppose (and who successfully blocked the 2005 gutting of Social Security).

Isn’t it convenient, therefore, that OFA and the DNC implemented a ludicrously stupid election plan that contributed to massive Democratic losses, changing the constitutency of the House to one that just happens to align more closely to his desired policy goals?

As I said above: President Obama, Tim Kaine and the like are either blithering idiots… or they’re actively working against the Democratic Party, seeing it as an obstacle to future plans.

The next few months should be interesting. My bet: Obama triangulates against Social Security, using his personally crafted Catfood Commission to justify gutting the signature New Deal program and legacy of actual progressivism. He’ll also ram this South Korean free trade deal through, further damaging both the Democratic Party and the Unions it relies on to survive.

Ian Welsh is right; it’s long past time to work toward primarying Obama in 2012.