After clinching the Democratic nomination for president after his Minnesota primary win in June 2008, then-senator Barack Hussein Obama (D-Ill.) gave a triumphant speech concluding with the following grandiose prophecy:

I am absolutely certain that generations from now, we will be able to look back and tell our children that this was the moment when we began to provide care for the sick and good jobs to the jobless; this was the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal; this was the moment when we ended a war and secured our nation and restored our image as the last, best hope on Earth. This was the moment - this was the time - when we came together to remake this great nation so that it may always reflect our very best selves, and our highest ideals.

Well, that was then.  This is now.  

This was the moment that Hurricane Matthew's potent winds are bringing higher oceans levels, higher tides, and warnings of storm surges.  

Storm surge flooding has already occurred along the northeast Florida coast, including in Daytona Beach and St. Augustine, and is spreading north.

According to the National Weather Service in Jacksonville, Florida, Friday morning, "Barrier islands are likely to be breached and it is extremely possible that new inlets will be cut off in the worst affected areas." The NWS office in Charleston, South Carolina, said Friday tide levels at both Charleston, South Carolina, and Ft. Pulaski, Georgia, could approach or even surpass those seen during the October 2015 epic flood event.

(But don't worry – this weather destruction will really stop with the new climate change agreement Obama so fervently believes in, according to MSNBC's master scientist and announcer, Ron Allen.  

... these severe storms, beach erosions, intense weather episodes that we’ve had is perhaps the most practical sample of what the president was talking about as the threat that the planet faces and this is what this whole climate agreement signed by 190 nations and now ratified by 60 or so is designed to stop. 

O-o-o-kay.)

Sure, stopping the rise of the oceans was Obama's most dramatic and memorable failed prediction of his Messianic Self, but there were others.  Many failed others.

For instance, his promise "to provide care for the sick."  This is the moment that the millions have to face dramatic increases in their health care premiums while scrambling to find new health care insurance as insurers increasingly drop out of the Obamacare marketplace.

And this is the moment – months and years, actually – for jobless coal miners suffering the wrath of Obama and his elitist environmentalists and other jobless workers who can't find those "good jobs for the jobless."  Just read the U.S. government's Bureau of Labor Statistics' own report, released on Friday.

The number of persons employed part time for economic reasons (sometimes referred to as involuntary part-time workers) was little changed in September at 5.9 million. These individuals, who would have preferred full-time employment, were working part time because their hours had been cut back or because they were unable to find a full-time job. (See table A-8.)

In September, 1.8 million persons were marginally attached to the labor force, about unchanged from a year earlier. (The data are not seasonally adjusted.) These individuals were not in the labor force, wanted and were available for work, and had looked for a job sometime in the prior 12 months. They were not counted as unemployed because they had not searched for work in the 4 weeks preceding the survey. (See table A-16.)

Among the marginally attached, there were 553,000 discouraged workers in September, little changed from a year earlier.  (The data are not seasonally adjusted.)  Discouraged workers are persons not currently looking for work because they believe that no jobs are available for them.  The remaining 1.3 million persons marginally attached to the labor force in September had not searched for work for reasons such as school attendance and family responsibilities.

And this is the time wars  haven't ended.  They're increasing.  Spreading.  And are more brutal.

Secretary of State John Kerry is frantically playing diplomacy with Russia's Vladimir Putin and China and Iran while the Mid-East explodes and the slaughter continues there, Iran laughs at the nuclear deal, and we're about to re-enter Iraq, making a tragic twist on Kerry's hopes that "we ended a war and secured our nation."  After the recent terrorist attacks in San Bernardino, California; Orlando, Florida; New York, N.Y.; and others, do you feel more secure today than you did eight years ago?

As for coming  "together to remake this great nation so that it may always reflect our very best selves, and our highest ideals," the nation is more divided than ever, and the would-be successor to Obama, Hillary R. Clinton (D), vows to carry on – and even expand – Obama's changes while labeling the followers of her opponent, Donald Trump (R), "a basket of deplorables."

However, one prediction has been fulfilled.  Judging from the surge of immigrants, both legal and illegal (no, not undocumented) "our image as the last, best hope on Earth" remains not because Obama "restored" it, but in spite of all he has done. 

Hopefully "generations from now we will be able to look back and tell our children that this was" the time that we were able to correct the damage Obama has done.  Hopefully.