Within one day’s time, the defeated, lame-duck Senate Democrats did one very smart thing—they created a new leadership position for Elizabeth Warren so that she can help shape messaging and policy and serve as a liaison to progressive groups—and they did one very stupid thing: they reversed their position and decided to allow a long-delayed vote on the Keystone XL pipeline, next week. It’s an attempt to save pro-energy industry Louisiana Sen. Mary Landrieu in her in December 6 runoff against Republican Rep. Bill Cassidy, and it’s worse than futile.

Harry Reid and company are apparently trying to compensate for all the Party money that’s dried up for Landrieu since the midterms (you can barely find her ads on TV, while Cassidy’s are flooding the state). By debating and co-sponsoring the Senate’s Keystone bill, Landrieu will get lots of free media time. But barring a miracle, there’s no way she can win. In the midterm, the third candidate, Republican Rob Maness, won nearly 14 percent of the vote, the vast bulk of which will now go to Cassidy. Who, not coincidentally, was made the lead sponsor of an identical Keystone bill in the House.

Rachel Maddow did a terrific piece (below) on the Dem’s Keystone crap-shoot last night, and summed it up like this:

It will not help Mary Landrieu now anyway, but it will kind of screw the environment, give the Republicans what they want, upset the Democratic base, set the president up for a painful presidential veto, and split the Democratic Party in Congress, and depress Democratic donors….It will win Democrats nothing, at great cost.

Landrieu was on TV today saying that her last-minute push for a Keystone vote “is not about the credit, this is not about the glory, it is not about politics.” That’s ridiculous. It has as much to do with politics as did her brave statement before the election that “the South hasn’t always been the friendliest place for African-Americans” or for women. No doubt she said that to appeal to the black and female electorates, but it was also the obvious and true thing to say, and she took a lot of disingenuous flack for it. But in oil-happy Louisiana, pushing for the pipeline is politics pure and simple, without the truth-to-power garnish.

We’ll be seeing a lot of grandstanding over the next week from the GOP, the right-wing media, and the newly emboldened cluster of conservative Democrats about all the jobs that the toxic tar-sand-carrying Keystone pipeline will create. So a little reminder: after the construction phase, according to Politifact, Keystone will create only about thirty-five permanent jobs. We’re not even talking about the high two digits.

Maddow on Keystone and Landrieu starts at about 1:50: