The desperation of Louisiana’s Democrats to be relevant is getting thick enough to cut with a knife, but their savvy and effectiveness doesn’t seem to be firming up at all.

That seems to be the only real conclusion one can draw at the news of a recall petition having been filed against Gov. Bobby Jindal by one Ronnie Ray Ceasar, an Opelousas man operating a Baton Rouge-based accounting firm. Ceasar, who received an MBA from Southern University in 2008 and is currently pursuing a PhD in public policy on the Bluff, filed the petition yesterday and now has six months to raise 908,000 signatures to force a recall election.

Recall efforts have proven themselves to be a complete waste of time. There have been four recall efforts against Jindal alone, and none have come even remotely close to forcing a recall election. Furthermore, Jindal will be up for re-election in less than 10 months, meaning that if Ceasar’s attempt at gaining those 908,000 signatures should bear fruit there would be a recall election at most a couple of months before the statewide primary race would take place.

Perhaps they don’t teach such things in Southern’s PhD program.

Ceasar either isn’t aware of the difficult logistics surrounding his effort, or he loves a challenge. Either way, he told Gannett Newspapers’ Mike Hasten he’s confident of success.

He said he realizes it’s an awesome task, but working with a civil rights group POWER — People on Weighing Equal Rights — “we have the resources and we have the manpower to get the job done.”

We’d never heard of POWER, which isn’t a surprise given the multiplicity of alphabet-soup lefty outfits dotting the state, but a quick Google search yields a MANTA listing in which the organization describes itself as…

Non-profit help organization involving assisting God’s people in seeking various social services including civil rights matters.

Help organization to help people of all races. Civil Rights enforcer. Awareness Christian Principles

And there’s a little more…

Fought civil rights matters in court rooms and with street marches in Lake Charles and Baton Rouge, LA with the intent only to help mankind maintain his/her dignity in the eyesight of God.

Getting headlines in the papers with publicity stunts must be good for mankind’s dignity.

In any event, Ceasar thinks he can get 908,000 signatures with modern technology.

“Several years ago this would have been nearly impossible,” Ceasar said, but it’s more likely now “because I’m going to use technology. With the power of the Internet, Facebook and an iPhone, I’m a powerful man. I can reach thousands in an hour.”

The last recall effort against Jindal was in 2008. They had the Internet, Facebook and iPhones then, too.

Why the recall?

“He is the worst governor we’ve had, and we’ve had some doozies,” Ceasar said of Jindal. “Louisiana is ranked 49th in health and you’re going to cut health care?”

With such advanced, PhD-quality political analysis, who can doubt this man?

The interesting thing here isn’t the recall effort itself, which is laughable. What’s interesting is the complete failure so far of Louisiana’s Democrat Party to put forth a candidate to run against Jindal next year. A gubernatorial race isn’t the same thing as a presidential primary, but we’re now less than 10 months away from the primaries and Jindal is actively raising money for his re-election campaign in every friendly hall he can find. If someone was going to mount a real challenge to the Governor you’d think there would at least be a vibe or two in the state’s political grapevine, but instead what you hear is a lot of “Naw, I ain’t runnin'” from the usual suspects. Certainly one could expect “Bananas” Foster Campbell, Public Service Commissioner and Puggy Moity electoral descendant – you can only envision a web ad from Bananas referring to Jindal as “Chanel No. 5” and insinuating that “he got a boy frand” – but as to serious candidates, to date there are none. The hour does seem to be getting late.

It may be that Ceasar’s petition is for his own aggrandizement. He seems to be following a well-trodden path to a state legislative run. But if he’s not stroking his own ego and has confederates of a more institutional nature, the strategy of dragging Jindal down to the level of Louisiana’s Democrat Party in advance of next year’s election bears attention – it’s a strategy Charlie Melancon went precisely nowhere with this year against David Vitter, but perhaps Jindal’s jaw is made of more brittle stuff than Vitter’s.