I want to engage in a brief moment of “I told you so.” On December 31, 2010, I wrote this prediction for 2011:
A copy of Barack Obama’s original Birth Certificate will be released to the public
I also predicted on April 24, a scant 3 days before Barack Obama released his long-form birth certificate:
I think the birther movement has peaked.
The former is undoubtedly true. The latter will be proved or disproved in the years to come. One measure, albeit a crude one, of the strength of the birther movement is the number of people who visit this blog. Over half of the traffic here consists of people arriving via search engine, and most of these by searching for some variation of “obama conspiracy” where this blog has been top ranked for a very long time.
April of 2011 had more visitors recorded on this site than any other month since the first month this blog was in business.
Congrats Doc. I didn’t think he would release the long form. I still am not convinced it was the correct decision, but your prediction was on the money.
Before you break into the home run trot, though I will note that you did predict that Rodney West would be the doctor of record.
I owe you an apology. I thought the original would be shown at a Honolulu presser, 6 weeks before the election.
That prediction has been scrubbed 😉
Congrats on the prediction about the long-form. You may recall, I doubted he could even get one, and I have publicly admitted: You were right, and I was wrong.
As far as the birther movement peaking, though, I doubt it. Yes, a lot of people dropped birtherism after the long-form was released. But the real crazies doubled down, and they are screeching all over the web that it’s a forgery, as you know.
Corsi and Farah have stepped up the crazy, too. I have a feeling that in 6 months or so, the number of people believing the long-form is a fake will grow significantly.
Also, when the primaries begin, the remaining birthers will go bonkers. Right now on several websites I keep seeing birthers who say it’s almost over and he’ll never make it through the summer. When he wins the Iowa caucuses, those people are going to have a difficult time adjusting.
Perhaps in terms of numbers we’ve passed the peak, but I bet the numbers will grow again. In terms of intensity of the hardcore birthers themselves, I think you ain’t seen nothin’ yet.
I’m going to agree. And I’m terrified. Orly is trying to incite a lone wolf.
Medgar Evers, James Meredith, Dr. King, Vernon Jordan…
Doc, you were spot on. I didn’t think he would as that is not Hawaiian policy, got to say it stopped Trump cold. But the Afterbirhers are really sick and possibly dangerous, they speak of Obama being gone by summer. When Obama wins relection I don’t think the deleuded can handle it.
I remember first hearing that he had released a vital records copy and I was stunned. I felt it was the wrong thing to do. But as it happened his timing was spot on, and I didn;t know he was already planning the Bin Ladin attack
I’m still a little undecided as to whether it was a mistake long term, but whats done is done and it seems to have worked out so far.
Sad but true.
It should be pointed out that just about every regular here predicted that if the long-form birth certificate was ever released, the birthers would immediately scream “Forgery!”
I predicted that 3 things would happen with the birthers…
1. They’d claim that it was a forgery.
2. They’d say that it doesn’t actually prove anything. A.K.A. something akin to “Dr. David Sinclair was close personal friends with Tute Dunham. He had no problem attesting to the fact of birth, and slipping it in with his normal paperwork for the Hawaii Department of Health to register. And since it was possible that he did that, the birth certificate doesn’t actually prove that Obama was born in Hawaii. We need further documentation.”
3. They’d say it doesn’t matter anyway, because Obama is ineligible because of another reason. A.K.A. The mythical 2-parent citizenship theory.
I’ve seen pleanty of examples of #1 and #3. Haven’t really seen #2 yet.
I don’t think the intended audience was the birthers. No one honestly cares what they think since none of them would ever vote for Obama under any circumstances. The intended audience was swing voters. It seems to have worked with that group, since those expressing “doubts” has fallen a lot,especially among independents. An effect on actual voting intentions is hard to measure given the closeness of the “long form” release. to the killing of bin Laden, which obviously dwarfed it in significance.
To be honest, i’m not sure that the effect of the “long form” is really greater than that of the COLB, or simply that the “long form” was given the full release treatment of a White House presser and media vs just posting on a web site. I think for most ordinary people it wasn;t that the COLB was insufficient, but rather that they had never actually seen it.
As long as we’re on the subject of predictions, would anyone care to make a make a prediction about whether Orly will be sanctioned by the California State Bar before the end of the year? I predict she will.
Its hard to know, to be honest. They way she is illegally firing off subpenas in other jurisdictions means she has moved up to a whole new level of insane. It really depends on whether she does something so outrageous that the CA bar simply cant ignore it
> would anyone care to make a make a prediction about whether Orly will be sanctioned by the California State Bar before the end of the year? I predict she will.
Sanctioned maybe, disbarred not.
After seeling Holy Cao go through public defender after public defender (and watching the 7-year shenanigans in “SCO vs. Novell/IBM”), my faith in the system working is frail.
> I think for most ordinary people it wasn;t that the COLB was insufficient, but rather that they had never actually seen it.
And I think that for most ordinary people, “don’t know where Obama was born” wasn’t because they were potential birthers, but rather that they never as much as looked on Wikipedia about his birthplace.
One prediction of mine that seems to be wrong is that I expected Lakin to go full-tilt birther again after his release, now that (for the umpteenth time) the birthers screamed “he has standing”. Right now it seems he’s going to lay it all to rest.
Another prediction of mine was that we’d see a split in the birther movement. I didn’t expect most of them going “it was never about birthplace” but rather a schism of “still hunting that Kenyan birth proof” vs. “de Vattel”. (However it seems the latter is seeing a revival.)
What I fully expected was to see different prominent birthers to keep going down the rabbit hole at different speeds – with Dr Kate approaching Lame Cherry in nuttyness and others remaining basically the same (are we going to have to call them “sane birthers” one day? Perish the thought!).