New York Times opinion columnist Thomas Friedman avoids the fire-breathing rhetoric of his colleagues, men such as Frank “Trump has no soul” Bruni or Paul “the markets will never recover” Krugman. Instead, Friedman tries to present himself as a reasonable man from the Midwest. His problem is that the Times, where he’s worked for almost 40 years, is a bastion of some of America’s hardest left politics. Friedman no longer has any idea what reason and moderation in politics look like, leading to an unintentionally funny column.

Friedman’s latest idea to cover for Joe Biden’s increasingly obvious mental incapacity is to pick his administration in advance. Friedman already pushed this notion back in February, when he promised Democrats that they could overwhelm Trump in November by doing “something extraordinary – forge a national unity ticket the likes of which they have never forged before.” (And yes, the Times really does allow that kind of allow prose from its writers.)

In February, before the Times became concerned about COVID-19, Friedman thought that Biden could turn things around by promising to hire every hotshot Democrat and RINO, from Amy Klobuchar as Veep and Kamala Harris as Attorney General, to celebrity leftists such as Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (whom he liked as the U.N. ambassador), to RINOS like Mitt Romney for Commerce Secretary and William McRaven for Defense.

Things have changed since February, so Friedman is back with a new iteration of the same idea. This time, he’s going to have a different kind of unity government, one that’s bigger than the Democrats and RINOs in his last effort. Now, he says that it’s not enough to have woman for Vice President. Instead,

Biden needs to go much, much further: At the Democratic convention he needs to name not just his vice president, but his entire cabinet. And it needs to be a totally different kind of cabinet — a national unity cabinet — from Democrats on the Bernie Sanders left to Republicans on the Mitt Romney right. Why?

Because while most people are playing nice right now managing this virus, the wreckage, pain and anger it will leave behind will require megadoses of solidarity and healing from the top.

Putting aside the fundamental vapidity of this idea, what makes the opinion piece incredibly funny is Friedman’s idea of what constitutes the political gamut from left to right. His column is weirdly reminiscent of Dorothy Parker’s famous remark that Katherine Hepburn, during her early days on Broadway, ran “the gamut of human emotion from A to B.”

Friedman begins by establishing the basic beliefs that members of this hypothetical “national unity” government must possess. Lo and behold, all of these ideas are Democrat principles, from believing in “science” as if it’s a thing, not a process; to an unquestioning acceptance of anthropogenic climate change; to supporting big government' to pushing socialized medicine. Friedman is so ensconced in his Times bubble that he can’t imagine a world in which decent, competent people don’t believe in these ideas, let alone a world (the real world) in which these ideas consistently fail.

Showing that he’s not only foolish but is also faddish, Friedman has thrown over Amy Klobuchar as his Veep pick (“that’s so February!”). This time around, he wants as Veep Gov. Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan, who opted against hydroxychloroquine because Trump touted it, before demanding it because it saves lives. She also made the patently untrue claim that Trump had instructed his administration. not to help her state. As Trump would say, "Loser!"

Other “unity” ideas? Having Elizabeth Warren, the shrewish socialist, oversee “the trillions of dollars” in coronavirus spending; making activist judge Merrick Garland the Attorney General; having Mitt Romney (whose Massachusetts governorship was where Obamacare really started) as Secretary of State; and giving Al Gore the EPA. Friedman also continues to love having AOC at the UN.

Lesser-known figures are there too. For Education Secretary, he wants Laurene Powell Jobs (Steve Jobs’ widow), who founded the Emerson Collective, a hard-left organization that pushes climate change, illegal immigration, and other “social justice” ideas. He’d give the Defense Department to Michèle Flournoy, a Clinton and Obama bureaucrat who led the charge against Romney’s claim that Russia was a geopolitical foe. It was only when Trump came along that Russia became the enemy.

The whole thing is ridiculous. Friedman comes across as the political equivalent of Mickey Rooney when the latter insisted that, with hard times a 'comin', all the kids had better put on a show:

Mostly, though, it’s a pathetic article. The reality is that Joe Biden is rapidly lapsing into complete incoherence and Trump’s opponents are throwing everything they’ve got into wrapping so much padding around him that no one will notice that there’s a man with senile dementia heading the Democrat party’s presidential ticket.

Joe Biden loses his train of thought several times in one sentence: "I, you know, but I think that, you know - I think if there's an election, if there was an election, if people - depending how many showed up, I think I'll have done well, but who knows" pic.twitter.com/RuUmj6yBrH

— Steve Guest (@SteveGuest) April 8, 2020

“We’ve never allowed any crisis from the Civil War straight through to the pandemic of 17, all the way around, 16, we have never, never let our democracy sakes second fiddle, way they, we can both have a democracy and ... correct the public health.”

OMG.pic.twitter.com/hY8OqgKP3R

— The First (@TheFirstonTV) April 6, 2020