HE WAS BORN ON THIRD BASE AND PRETENDS HE HIT A DOUBLE :

Obviously, if Trump were a straight-A student who aced his SATs, he would have been more than happy to have those records made public. But why would it have mattered so much even if he wasn't? Who would really care whether a man in his 70s got a C in history class a half century ago?

It's more than just embarrassment. The answer lies in the narrative Trump was writing, not just about himself but about Obama and the entire American system.

That narrative told white voters that their resentments and disappointments were both perfectly valid and not their fault. When Trump told them that the system was "rigged" against them, he wasn't talking about wealth and power. He was talking about white people supposedly being held back, by immigrants and undeserving black people who had been pushed ahead of them to the front of the line.

Central to that picture was the idea that Obama was the most undeserving of all. Trump turned himself from a reality show character to a political figure by becoming the country's most prominent advocate of birtherism, the racist theory that Obama was not a real American but, in fact, had been born in Kenya.

What may be not quite as well remembered is that Trump also repeatedly demanded that Obama release his transcripts, and claimed over and over that Obama could not possibly have gotten into Columbia University and Harvard Law School on merit.

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