The left has always been a movement in danger of going straight over the edge. You can see it in the rhetoric, the agenda, the public behavior, and the quality of people it attracts. Many of us have been waiting for years for it to blow up like a Soviet-era nuclear reactor. But although individual leftists have redlined (Hillary, Anthony Weiner, your name here), the movement as a whole has repeatedly pulled out before going into the abyss. There always seems to be a rescuing hand extended from somewhere or other. (More on that later.)

That’s why 2019 was such a satisfactory year – much more satisfactory than most. Because 2019 was the year that the left plunged toward oblivion, howling madly, engines exploding, and fuel tanks ablaze.

You voice doubts, comrades? Well then, come along with me for a short stroll through some of the highlights of the past twelve months.

• Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez – The Future of the Progressive Movement is an ex-waitress who is frightened of a garbage disposal. Almost her first act in office was to cost New York City tens of thousands of jobs by running Amazon out of town. It was followed by a series of solecisms, idiocies, and contradictions unequalled in the American political record. If this marks the new progressive politician – human black holes destroying rationality and coherence by their very existence – then bring ‘em on.

• Tlaib and Omar – This pair has proven inadequate to their mission, which was to make Jihadi terror look normal and all-American, preparatory to a flood of their type entering government on all levels. Instead, somebody forgot to whitewash their connections to some of the vilest Jihadi outfits on the planet, including Hamas and the Moslem Brotherhood. Quite apart from that, we have the fact that they’re dirty in every other sense as well, with Tlaib awarding herself spare campaign funds and Omar… Well, she turns out to be that kind of girl that can’t touch anything at all without turning it inside out in eight separate dimensions. At this point, it’s not even clear what her name is, or what Somalian murder squad she’s actually related to. The two of them have managed to duck consequences so far, but it’s still early days.

• Greta Thunberg – The climate exploitation movement finally found its world representative in an emotionally unbalanced sixteen-year-old. This pretty much speaks for itself. All we need add is that it’s a clear sign of desperation from a collapsing movement: “We’ve tried the scientists, we’ve tried the pols, we’ve tried the UN… let’s throw in the twitch and see how she does.”

• Eric Swallwell – Apart from IBS symptoms, Swallwell has carved for himself a historical niche as the first politician to threaten to use nuclear weapons against fellow Americans. That was bad enough, but you have to add in the number of condemnations he received from the Dems, which hover around ‘zero.’ The party thinks they’ve successfully buried this. They are mistaken.

• Virginia – Let’s see, two racist idiots and a sex criminal walk into a bar… They emerge a short time later as governor, lieutenant governor, and attorney general. And then get re-elected, whereupon they threaten to confiscate all firearms in the state, using the National Guard to do so (that is, if Eric can’t get them nukes). This sparks a mini-revolt all across the Virginia piedmont, with local governments and law enforcement vowing defiance. All this even before the new term starts. This is a particularly impressive case as it proves that the Dems are corrupt from top to bottom and that there’s no possible hope of reform.

• Erik Wemple and Rachel Maddow – This is odder than most people are aware of. Those who pay any attention to the WaPo know that Wemple is one of the men behind the curtain – a guy who lets everybody else know what the party line is going to be from day to day. Among other things, he led the charge against Sarah Palin in 2008. Yet for the past couple years, he has been growing increasingly reasonable and rational. Mellowing out with age, or perhaps a message from Jeff@Amazon telling him to cool it? That’s anybody’s guess, but the fact that he’s the one that lowered the boom on Ms. Paranoia is a shocker, clear evidence of a civil war growing within leftist ranks.

• Corbyn and Labour -- Not at all American, but not that far distant either, the progressive left being “international,” you see. Jeremy Corbyn is the white-trash Limey who pioneered the concept that reviving anti-Semitism was a proper accompaniment to progressive left-wing policies. This resulted in an electoral trouncing (by an ebullient, wild-haired, dark-suited vulgarian, yet) not seen since the Thatcher epoch. Which leads us to…

• Anti-Semitism -- This has always been the last refuge of the political fanatic, and the current murder campaign against American Jews over the past few weeks is no exception. These attacks have largely been carried out by sheltered minorities, triggered by BLM and assorted Islamists, and egged on by the likes of Sandy O, Tlaib, Omar, and de Blasio, whose People’s Republic has hosted most of the atrocities. We can take some small comfort in the fact that these campaigns often mark the last spasm of the movements carrying them out.

• The Primaries – The Democrats in this campaign year seem as if they are hell-bent on illustrating, in a 21st-century setting, Orwell’s description of the left as comprised of “every fruit-juice drinker, nudist, sandal-wearer, sex-maniac, Quaker, ‘Nature Cure’ quack, pacifist, and feminist...” A fake Indian, a gay small-city mayor, a mayor of a larger, failed city with imaginary friends, a corrupt state AG… Not to mention old Joe, whose son Hunter turns out to be a Bond villain. These were among the best that the Democratic Party could come up with. All we need to add to that is an undeniable fact that it was the two crazy aunts – Hindu cultist Tulsi Gabbard and pop Christian mystic Marianne Williamson – who came across as the most attractive, well-spoken, and sanest of the lot.

• The Impeachment – This is clearly the result of the Dems caught in an echo chamber and beginning to believe their own rhetoric. It was kicked off by the party’s freakshow leadership – the Mummy Woman, the Human Lemur, and Jerry the Fat Boy – with absolutely no hope of any positive result. They pressed on regardless, even as sympathies swung toward President Trump and the status of the Democrats eroded to the point that their hold on the House is now threatened. They hammered through the vote all the same, constantly accelerating, until…

Until Nancy Pelosi, unable to look failure in the face, refused to turn the articles over to the Senate on specious grounds – and did this at the beginning of the Christmas recess, when absolutely nothing could be done to alter the situation.

So for three weeks, there she is, hanging like Wile E. Coyote waiting for gravity to take hold. She is now in the worst position a politician can envision: a situation in which all possible alternatives mean even more public humiliation for herself and her party. She can either maintain her insistence on being the Red Queen of American politics, or submit to the Senate and see her impeachment articles tossed aside. And it’s all her doing. So much for the “smartest woman in Washington.”

In the past, someone would have come forward to pull them out of it. A diversion would be created, allowing them to dump the whole thing, some halfwit Republican would rise to the defense of “our friends across the aisle,” the media would do what the media does.

And there have been some attempts to do exactly that. Murkowski was wheeled out, and several of the Russell Kirk school of conservatism have run around in circles screeching, “It’s over! Pelosi’s won! Let’s give up right now!” (I’ve had to field some of these myself here at AT.)

But it’s not going to happen. It’s not going to happen because of one single factor. You know what that factor is as much as I do, playmates.

Donald Trump is not a career politician. He is beholden to no one. He is a veteran of two industries in which many of his competitors were gentlemen with long names with many vowels in them. They did not frighten him, and it is unlikely that the Schiffs and Nadlers of Washington will succeed in doing so. Despite relentless persecution, unending idiot accusations, and vicious attacks on his family, topped off by this mock-impeachment, he has not backed down a single inch.

And this is an election year, after which Donald Trump, to quote some well-known words, will have “more flexibility.”

2020 may be the year the left is smashed flat.

I can’t wait.