Stop What You’re Doing and Watch This Comically Awful Democratic Campaign Ad Now

This ad popped up in my Twitter feed last night, and it’s pretty much the only thing I’ve been able to think about since. Just…my God…there are no words. Please, just watch, and try not to let your head explode as you do.

You guys think I’m joking or trolling when I say Dems will never win an election ever again.

This is Dan Helmer, the Dem running in VA-10 pic.twitter.com/bmgY4EB5IL

— Comfortably Smug (@ComfortablySmug) September 18, 2017

I mean, good for Dan Helmer for taking a risk? But holy crap, I don’t even know where to begin. It’s like Helmer walked into the DNC offices, said he wanted to run a different campaign and show some personality, and the DNC then spent seven figures on consultants to poll-test what kind of personality he was allowed to show. The fact that they slapped the word “veteran” on a t-shirt for him is the perfect example of how our political parties exploit the troops as political props.

Let’s see…what else made me mad? It’s hard to focus when you black out every five seconds because your brain is rejecting reality. Oh yeah…

“You’ve lost that centrist feeling!?!?!?!”

WHAT

THE

EFFING

EFF

I guarantee that phrase alone cost five figures to figure out how to wedge it into this calamity. As someone with more center-left political views, I don’t even know what that’s supposed to mean. Am I supposed to get the warm and fuzzies whenever the topic of oil subsidies comes up, or further deregulation for our “job creators?” What the fuck is centrism anymore? At one point, it used to be a natural end-point for finding compromise between the two parties, but the Democrats don’t compromise, they capitulate to the Republicans hostage negotiations. So “centrism” now falls on (at least) the center-right. This is what the Democrats either don’t get, or willfully misunderstand.

If the Democratic Party were a high school political organization, they’d run for student council on the promise of limiting homework to four hours a night and putting a cop in every classroom. They are Martin Prince from The Simpsons without the intelligence (so, Comic Book Guy?). If you told me that the DNC is entirely staffed with aliens desperately trying to learn how to behave like humans, I wouldn’t question it one bit. It’s a better explanation than the above ad being the product of actual human “ingenuity.”

Every time I watch this ad, I become more convinced of Comfortably Smug’s assertion that Democrats are never winning another election ever again. Donald Trump is going to tweet out the pee tape, Robert Mueller will indict him for treason, and he’ll still beat the DNC’s army of Hillarybots in every election until he dies. Get your shit together DNC. This is pathetic.

UPDATE: I can’t believe that I and pretty much everyone else laughing at this video missed it, but credit to Twitter user @AppliedGiftedEd for bringing my attention to the fact that the American flag on Helmer’s chest HAS ONLY 11 STRIPES!!!!! (The American flag has 13) Someone may want to let the DNC know about this. I went down a Google rabbit hole before updating this post to see if I could find any explanation for an 11-striped American flag, but the only stuff I could find are incredibly ironic examples of knockoffs found in Benghazi and a prototype confederate flag where the 11 bars represented the 11 seceding states. I’ve reached out to Helmer’s campaign to see if they have an explanation and will update again if they respond, but in the meantime, if you can explain why Helmer is wearing an American flag with 11 bars, drop me a line on Twitter.

Jacob Weindling is a staff writer for Paste politics. Follow him on Twitter at @Jakeweindling.