Let's check up on some Obama predictions. How'd I do?

Every political watcher makes predictions. Generally, when making forecasts, I follow one simple rule: Presume the worst and you'll be right more than half the time.

God knows I haven't been right all of the time. Many of my prognostications have been splendidly blunderific. Even so, I remain convinced that anyone who continually points to the worst case scenario will be proven correct at least 51% of the time. Every casino in Vegas was built on those odds.

Here was my list of Obama-era predictions on election day. Let's see how well I called the shots:

The progs will cheer themselves and snarl at us for a while, and the proud man's contumely will be difficult to bear. The Kossacks will feel justified in their strategy of winning hearts and minds by insulting the folks they hope to convert.

And so it came to pass.

But their unpleasant tactics will hurt the prog-bots in the long run. Eventually, the nation will turn against all of those waspish O-worshippers who spent this election season writhing in perpetual Coulter-gasm. Have faith in the inherent unlovability of the Kos Krowd.

That has not really happened yet. But I think it will.

When Obama stumbles -- and he will -- we will see a flurry of books that divulge what really happened during his rise to power. That's when Marshall and Moulitsas and Stassinopoulos will see their reps crumble.

Not yet. Maybe in the future.

The Obot pundits who now control much of the national debate will then lose their ability to command attention. They'll have no claim to "fight the Power." Their candidate will be the Power. And those who dislike the Power will dislike them. The Obots have nothing to say beyond "Behold the Lightbringer! Is He not glorious?" By March 2009 -- June at the latest -- that sort of messianism will seem very tiresome.

Ding ding ding! If you nudge the date to July, this one has proven accurate.

As for the real Ann Coulter and her ideological comrades, they will go into Automatic Gainsaying mode, as they did during the Clinton years. That too could get tiresome.

Oh boy, has this one ever come true. "Tiresome" may be the wrong word, though. What's happening now is frightening.

Conservatives are at their most creative -- and their most dangerous -- when they operate as outsiders. Beware reactionary propagandists who go into subversive mode. Beware the resurgence of right-wing populism. That's when the ghosts of Tom Watson and Tailgunner Joe will rise. That's when the Monster from the Id will snap its tether.

Was I right or was I right? I erred only in using the word "creative." The tactics of bullying are ancient and require little creativity.

I fear a return to the Winter of Hate, 1994-95, when The X-Files was on the air and in the air. Remember when everyone was talking about militias and Roswell and evil bankers and all that rot? Conspiracy chic may come back, but with one key difference: The nation will not be prosperous. The nation will be filled with hungry, desperate, ill-educated people, many of them living in cars.

A dangerous situation indeed. We're talking Sieg Heil dangerous.

Birther mania marks the return of conspiracy chic. Once the birth card has been fully played out, new reasons for paranoid speculation will emerge.

People will turn to conspiracy chic as their problems mount and Obama proves incapable of offering real solutions. (Frankly, I doubt that anyone can end our present difficulties.) And make no mistake: Many progs -- many who now worship at the altar of O -- will not be able resist the lure of conspiranoia.

You can see hints of this on the progblogs right now. Many of those who worshiped the Lightbringer in 2008 will be heavily invested in Obamanoia by 2010. However, even after the worm has well and truly turned, none of those "progressives" will see fit to apologize for the atrocious things they did during the primaries.

It's funny, innit? Obama's supporters spent most of 2008 wallowing in a mire of hatred, invective, paranoia, sensationalism, caucus cheating, bullying and political thuggery -- all engineered by Axelrod in Chicago. The Obots did a heavy trade in wacky conspiracy theories. They commandeered public events. They played to the Id. They dealt in imagery and emotion, not in rational discourse. They became a mob, a movement, a cult of personality. They submerged their individual identities in a sea of fanaticism. They astroturfed nonstop. They were just plain fucking obnoxious. Now the Lightbringer stands on the receiving end of the same vile tactics, and the Kos krowd -- forever arrogant, forever incapable of self-criticism -- refuses to acknowledge that they incurred a karmic debt which must now be repaid.

Can anyone tell me the moral difference between the "darkened video" conspiracy canard which was used against Hillary and the "birth certificate" conspiracy canard now being used against Obama? What goes around, comes around.

I came to hate the progs in 2008. I'll probably hate them just as much in 2010, when they will turn against Obama and jump on the paranoia bandwagon.

The same simple-minded capital-B Believers in B, the ones who write to me every damn day to tell me that Jesus will forgive me if I simply accept His Only Begotten Lightbringer into my heart, those same people will be trying to sell me on the latest versions of the standard conspiracy memes. We'll see all the classics -- blame the Fed, blame the Jews, blame the Muslims, blame the Masons, blame the Illuminati, blame the Aliens. We'll see revamped versions of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion and the Report From Iron Mountain and the Gemstone File. We'll see a steady stream of new fake documents claiming to give us the scoop from deep inside Conspiracy Central.

Will progressives fall for this crap? Of course they will. Many of them are young and stupid, and they have the jackass self-confidence of the young and stupid. The new conspiracism will seem very exciting and cutting-edge to them, even though it will seem very old and familiar to geezers like me.

Watch it happen.

Suppose, for example, that a new terrorist outrage hits the country in 2009. A city blows up, the bubonic plague hits Yale, Al Qaeda establishes Sharia law on Tom Sawyer's Island at Disneyland. Whatever. You can guess the response: The administration's growing number of enemies will, of course, scream that Obama engineered the attack.

They will scream those words regardless of the actual facts on the ground. They will scream first on fringe sites like Alex Jones' Prison Planet, and then on Rigorous Intuition, and then the screamers will creep into places like D.U., and then a few of 'em will sneak into Air America. Frightening messages will appear in your email inbox. Every day. The meme will take hold. People who now love love love Barack Obama will become Obama-diddit theorists. Those emotionally wedded to this way of unthinking will assail anyone who says that the evidence for Obama-diddit is lacking -- which means, of course, that the new conspiracists will be furious with yours truly. "Whose side are you on, Cannon?" The same people who now try to convert me to the Gospel According to Barry will accuse me of being Barry's secret agent.

It's all so bloody predictable.

Watch it happen.