JAMES TARANTO: Shut Up, He Explained Again: Obama continues a debate he insists is over.

They say it’s the sincerest form of flattery. At a press conference yesterday President Obama asserted that when it comes to ObamaCare, the Republican Party “is going through the stages of grief–anger and denial and all that stuff–and we’re not at acceptance yet.” We used the same gag in October, though ObamaCare supporters were the butt of our joke. And we were recycling our own material: We also invoked the Elisabeth Kübler Ross “stages of grief” way back in November 2000 in reference to Al Gore’s refusal to concede his loss to George W. Bush.

Blogress Ann Althouse astutely observes that Obama skipped “bargaining,” perhaps “because he doesn’t want his party to have to bargain with the other side.” . . .

Another adjective that comes to mind is “unpresidential.” Obama, after all, isn’t president of only Democrats, nor are only Republicans opposed to ObamaCare or worried about its consequences. To those who see an inconsistency in this column’s criticizing Obama for using a gag we’ve employed in the past, let us clarify things with a Shermanesque answer to a question nobody is asking: We promise that we will never run for, or serve as, president.

Would that Obama had given such a pledge. And kept it.