Readers who missed my columns in December and January, or who suffer from amnesia, need proceed no further than this paragraph. Be assured that all my predictions regarding the presidential race have come true, more or less.

But for the rest of you, well, at least I have plenty of excuses for having been wrong. Was it my fault that the media lost their collective minds in the past year and dedicated more coverage to Donald Trump than to all other candidates combined — on both sides? I heard on NPR the other day that as of March, the amount of free media Trump has received would have cost him $1.9 billion had he needed to purchase it. I guess there is such a thing as a free lunch, if you already happen to be a billionaire.

I still say Marco Rubio would have been the smart choice for the Republicans. He’s young, smart, handsome, Hispanic, Catholic and a good debater — qualities that made him the favored choice of the Republican establishment after his strong third-place finish in Iowa. But unfortunately for Rubio, his presidential rivals saw the same assets that I identified, so Jeb Bush, Trump, Ted Cruz and especially Chris Christie all turned their fire on Rubio in New Hampshire, and he faltered badly there.

The race became even more muddled when John Kasich finished second in New Hampshire, leaving the Republicans with not one, but three competitive alternatives to Trump: Cruz, Rubio and Kasich. Soon everyone else in the race dropped by the wayside. But every time someone did, Trump seemed to gobble up their share of the vote.

At least I was right about my observation that the Republican establishment truly dislikes Ted Cruz. The man who former House Speaker John Boehner disparagingly called “Lucifer in the flesh” might have finished second to Trump in votes and delegates, but he was never a popular second. So while I thought that Rubio and Cruz would battle it out and then Rubio would beat Trump, ultimately Republican voters eliminated Rubio and then chose the King of Twitter over the Prince of Darkness. Their convention and their party platform promise to provide more utterly unpredictable entertainment under Trump.

Meanwhile on the Democratic side, the media began calling the race for Hillary before the Iowa caucuses had even begun, thanks to the unique fundraising arrangement that the Clinton Super PAC, the Democratic National Committee and 33 state Democratic parties agreed to last August. Jeff Weaver, Bernie Sanders’ campaign manager, has called this scheme “money laundering,” and while the plan might meet legal technicalities — especially in the wake of the Citizens United decision — Weaver’s accusation as a straightforward description of what is going on, is on the money, so to speak. Not only has this system allowed individual donors to “bundle” a gift of $350,000 to the Clinton Super PAC, it also effectively locked up more than 400 superdelegates for Hillary before any popular votes had even been cast.

As a Sanders supporter, I am frustrated not only by Clinton’s superdelegate advantage, but also by the relatively minuscule media coverage that Sanders has received when compared with Clinton, and especially when compared with Trump. Throughout this primary season, and as far back as late 2015, Bernie has consistently drawn the biggest, most enthusiastic crowds of any candidate on either side. As of this writing, he has now won 20 states, compared to 24 for Hillary. And although his chances of winning the Democratic nomination are now slim at best, his favorability ratings continue to rise. So at least I was right when I predicted that the more voters got to know him, the better they would like him.

Had the national media given reasonably balanced coverage to all candidates, we might have had a Rubio-Sanders match-up in the fall. As it stands, voters will be left with the monster that the media has created facing off against a candidate that most people regard as competent, yet not very trustworthy. I still say, we could have done so much better.

John McColgan writes from his home in Joseph.