There are times where I actually feel sorry for the far left in this country. Events have conspired to make them such a political irrelevancy that watching them self destruct day after day is like watching that Star Trek Next Generation episode where the Enterprise crew was caught up in a time loop that had them repeating the same day over and over. Unlike the starship crew however, the left is unable to escape their own loop because in order to do so they would have to practice a minimum amount of introspection regarding where their tactics and rhetoric have gotten them. That way lies madness which makes watching them something akin to watching a NASCAR race at Daytona; you wait with a combination of trepidation and excitement for the inevitable crack-up in turn #3.

Witness this latest jaw dropper from our friends at Truthout, a site that combines the looniness of the Democratic Underground with a comical belief in their own importance to the Democratic party a la Daily Kos. One William Rivers Pitt sends an arch, insulting, and in the end uproariously funny memo to Congressional Democrats asking them to “walk out” during the President’s State of the Union speech next week:

I have a wild and crazy idea.

George W. Bush’s delivery of the State of the Union address will take place on Tuesday, January 31, a little more than a week from now. It is my strong belief that every single Democrat present in the House chamber for the speech should, at a predetermined moment, stand up and walk out. No yelling. No heated words. Every Democrat should simply stand silently and leave.

Crazy, I know. Crazy, and possibly the best idea ever put before a body of Democrats since the New Deal.

Well Bill, aren’t you the “wild and crazy” guy! Now you’ve piqued my interest – please continue:

Understand this, congressional Democrats, and understand it well: you are not dealing merely with a body of political opponents in the GOP. You are dealing with a group of people that want you exterminated politically. The days of walking the halls of the Rayburn Building, sharing a bourbon with a colleague from the other side of the aisle, and hammering out a compromise are as dead as Julius Caesar. Collegiality is out. Mutual respect is out. They want you gone for good. Erased. Destroyed.

Aren’t we the bloodthirsty ones!

For the love of God, you are being compared to Osama bin Laden all over network television because some within your ranks have had the courage to question the war in Iraq. It hasn’t been subtle. Bin Laden, according to the right-wing talking heads, is getting his talking points straight from Howard Dean. These are the out-front spokespeople for the folks running the GOP right now. If you think there is compromise to be had with these people, if you think there is quarter to be given to you, then I have a nice, big red bridge to sell you in San Francisco.

For a minute there, I though Mr. Pitt was going to try and defend the indefensible. But as I’ve been pointing out for several days, the left has decided not to try and defend themselves against the charge that Osama’s taped screed was interchangeable with just about anything found on Michael Moore’s website or in Howard Dean’s speeches. Instead, they simply change the subject by comparing their fantastic conspiracies with legitimate anti-war protests. Despite taking a deconstructionist position that words don’t matter, anyone with half a brain knows the truth of the matter and have judged accordingly. If Mr. Pitt would have come out and said that the left recognizes Osama Bin Laden is mimicking their rhetoric in a shameless attempt to divide Americans and by God, we’re not going to let that terrorist scum do that, I would at least have a little respect for the galoot. Instead, he ignores the obvious by sticking his head in the sand and pretending up is down, black is white, and that God didn’t make little green apples.

You’ve been outflanked, Democrats. Abramoff won’t help you, and the noise machine is preparing to terrorize the American people into such a distracted state that anything you say in the next ten months will be lost amid the howling. The midterms are pretty much a done deal, and your continued marginalization will proceed at speed.

You can stomp your feet and yell at the wall. You can put your head in your hands and weep. You can sit silently and be simply satisfied that your own job-for-life is secure, thanks to your friendly district back home, and be damned to actually doing anything of substance. In other words, you can continue to do what you’ve been doing since this outrageous assault on basic American democracy began.

Hold the phone here. Didn’t Mr. Pitt say that Republicans are out to “destroy” the Democrats? How can we do that if these same Congressmen are “simply satisfied that your own job-for-life is secure, thanks to your friendly district back home.” Pretty hard to destroy someone who can’t be beaten which, according to analysts like Michael Barone includes around 98% of House members, both Republican and Democratic. Now if Pitt is talking about national elections, perhaps if the Democrats didn’t beg to be destroyed every four years by fielding a candidate with the personality of a cocktail table and the brains of a marmoset – not to mention someone who thinks the politics of George McGovern is the magic key to victory at the polls – then perhaps you would find even red state Americans a little more open to your message. As it is, when people think that Democrats would rather watch them being killed than listen in on conversations by people in America who are talking with the killers, they tend not to pay any attention.

Here’s Mr. Pitt’s grand finale to his fantasy SOTU evening:

Walk outside to the steps of the Capitol Building and hold a Counter-State-of-the-Union. Lay out your plans for a better future. Explain how you will reform the system that spawned Mr. Abramoff. Demand answers and explanations about what is happening in Iraq, what is happening over at the National Security Agency, and why this administration believes itself to be completely above the law.

I can even offer a bit of text for your opening statement. “Three years ago during this very speech,” your leading spokesperson can say from those steps, “Mr. Bush told us that Iraq was in possession of 26,000 liters of anthrax, 38,000 liters of botulinum toxin, 500 tons – which is one million pounds – of sarin, mustard and VX nerve agent, 30,000 missiles to deliver the stuff, mobile biological weapons labs, al Qaeda connections, and uranium from Niger for use in a robust nuclear weapons program. He said all this three years ago, during this all-important annual address, and all of it was a lie. The American people deserve an explanation.”

First, in order to outline your party’s plans for a “better future” don’t you think that you should, you know, like have some plans in the first place? A small detail after all. There should be no problem in coming up with a complete party platform in a week.

As for the rest, the fact that the President was quoting from a report written by an organization that you and your friends put so much stock in, the United Nations, seems to have been lost in the excitement of carrying on with your deranged missives against the Bush Administration. And since most people can recognize the difference between a “lie” and being given shoddy intelligence, I’m afraid that part of your little speech will fall flat as well.

I would suggest that Mr. Pitt keep trying to encourage the Democrats to participate in more of these made for TV moments of drama. It appears to be all that your party has outside of an irrational and abiding hatred for the President and his supporters.

UPDATE:

Frequent commenter Ken McCracken writes:

Please, please please is there some way we could get them to actually try this?

Such an en masse temper tantrum would be the signal moment of the end of the Democratic party. They would literally be walking out of Congress and into oblivion.

Ken is right, of course. And the fact that Mr. Pitt doesn’t realize this makes him the Cluebat of the Week.