Kennedy was popular, Johnson was his VP. Johnson got re-elected. Pretty simple. Then Johnson kept Republicans at bay with his hopeless war.
This doesnt say anything about whay Obama would want to make himself and his party untrusted national jokes as a method to gain more power.
Nothing can explain why that theory makes any sense.
Remember January and February of 2012? Mitt Romney was the astute businessman who created new companies, millions of jobs, saved the 2002 Winter Olympics and worked across the aisle with Democrats in Massachusetts to achieve what had previously been considered impossible. He was a moderate's moderate and a certain winner in November. That's what the MSM told us.
By May, he had been transformed into a right wing extremist who personally killed a woman from cancer with his cold-hearted quest for the bottom line. By November, a narrow but still convincing majority of the American sheeple swallowed that line, hook and sinker.
What makes you think it will be any different this time? Until the credibility of the enemedia is shattered, it won't be.