I inaugurated this column early last fall with profiles of all the candidates of both parties and some predictions about the Dem and GOP races, which were just getting under way. Now that they are all but decided, I thought I’d go back and take a look at some of my calls.

Back on Sept. 20, I noted that Obama had plateaued in second place and was even falling further behind Hillary Clinton. He was definitely in need of a second leg and I wondered where he would find it.

My partially correct answer:

“Will Oprah Winfrey’s support provide him that second leg? Somewhat, but I doubt it will be enough. If, however, she (or some other issue) invigorates his black base, it will deflate Clinton’s numbers—though not in all-important Iowa or New Hampshire.”

Well, Winfrey’s endorsement turned out to be the turning point—and it brought him all-important Iowa, though not New Hampshire.

Between Iowa and Winfrey, however, the black vote did consolidate and brought about a landslide in South Carolina—a lead he never lost again.

Then, on Feb. 14—seems like ages ago—I sent this Valentine to Obama, titled, “It’s Obama: Do the math!” In it I said the fat lady was about to begin her aria—then ran thorough a lot of numbers, concluding:

“Inevitable?

“I hate to use the word, since it was applied to Clinton for so long—but Obama has to be the odds-on favorite.”

Writing on May 5, just before the Indiana and North Carolina primaries—which finally convinced even the densest of the Russerts and Stephanopoli that Obama was the presumptive nominee, I noted:

“On the other hand, he has countered the bad news by unveiling a new superdelegate or two every few days. In a week or two he actually may surpass her once massive lead in superdelegates—even if she nets another 10 or 12 elected delegates on Tuesday.”

Indeed, Obama surpassed her in superdelegates on May 10, less than a week later—having exceeded all expectations in both Indiana (a 2-point loss) and North Carolina (a 14-point win.)

Meanwhile, I was among the first to call out the Clintons for playing the race card in and around the South Carolina primary. They stopped for a while, but picked it up again following Indiana with her notorious comments about how only she can get the votes of “hard-working people, white people…”

As we all know, whites are the only hardworking people in America. Maybe the others should get, let us say, three-fifths of a vote, as in olden times they were considered three-fifths of a person. That kind of math might get her a few more delegates.

Then, looking back to my rundown on the GOP candidates, on Nov. 21 I did a quick profile of John McCain when he was at his lowest ebb. The candidate was broke…the rats were deserting the sinking boat…the punditocracy had relegated him to asterisk-land.

I added one partial note of caution:

“…there is something about this guy that makes me think there’s an outside chance he could stage some kind of comeback.

“If it happens it will be in New Hampshire where he beat Bush back in 2000. (I’m not predicting this by any means—just saying it’s not out of the question.)”

Well, even granting I hedged the call, it doesn’t look so bad in retrospect.

But at the end of that column I went way out on a limb—and we won’t know whether I was wrong or right until November:

“ In the long run, even if he manages a comeback and should strangely win the Republican nomination, Clinton’s or Obama’s people will make tacos out of him in the general election.”

Hmmmmm.

Finally, I must share my current vision of Sen. Clinton, which is drawn from a wonderful old Monty Python movie and stage play.

In it, the dark knight has met his match in a swordfight. First he loses an arm, but keeps fighting. Then he loses a leg, then the other arm, and then the other leg.

The wounded torso then rolls around on the ground, gushing blood from all four wounds shouting, “Come back and fight you dirty coward!”

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Don Rose, a regular political analyst for The Chicago Daily Observer and veteran strategist for liberal and independent political contests, has made it an invariable habit of being correct on most predictions, and here he goes again.