THE role of laughter in the serious business of political campaigns has a long lineage. In fact, satire and parody were born almost concurrently with politics. In the ancient world, writers like Aristophanes and Horace deployed humour to keep a check on the affairs of state. In 21st-century America, shows like "Saturday Night Live" and "The Daily Show" perform a similar service. During the 2008 election, Tina Fey’s impersonations of Sarah Palin were credited with damaging Palin’s image and the McCain-Palin ticket more broadly. America’s current presidential race has provided more than its share of material ripe for comedic send-up: Larry David’s Bernie Sanders, gesturing wildly and railing against Wall Street (“You gotta break the banks up into little pieces, and flush the pieces down the toilet!”). Kate McKinnon’s Hillary Clinton stiffly attempting to appeal to voters (“Citizens, you will elect me! I will be your leader!”). But the favourite target has been Donald Trump. Voters who despise his politics have been hard pressed not to take pleasure in laughing at Mr Trump’s grandiose pronouncements. Mrs Clinton herself has struggled to keep a straight face. When his name came up in an interview with ABC News, she giggled and apologised, “I’m sorry, I can’t help it.”

The Roman poet Juvenal famously explained that it was "hard not to write satire" about his countrymen, so corrupt and decadent had they become. Mr Trump poses a curious inversion to this: he makes satire almost impossible. Satire frequently relies on exaggeration in its parody of political figures. Think of SNL’s portrayals of Mr Sanders and Mrs Clinton, for instance: they succeed by amplifying the candidates’ actual statements and mannerisms to the point of absurdity. But Mr Trump already speaks in superlatives and hyperbole. He's already a walking caricature of himself. How do you exaggerate statements like: “Sorry loses and haters, but my IQ is one of the highest and you all know it! Please don’t feel so stupid or insecure, it’s not your fault”?

This is part of why Mr Trump’s appearance on SNL earlier this fall was such a flop: the skits couldn’t find any room to inflate his character. Tellingly, the most successful parodies, like this video of Mr Trump as a drunk frat bro, simply repeat his words verbatim. He doesn’t need much tweaking. Of course, not all viewers are in on the joke. Many Americans believe Mr Trump is a genuinely great candidate. This has made his supporters the butt of jokes too—as in SNL's skit of "drunk uncle" praising his favourite, stiff-haired candidate. (It seems alcohol is the only reasonable way comedians can make sense of the Trump phenomenon.)

Victims of Mr Trump’s remarks—Mexicans, Muslims, and women, to name just a few—vacillate between condemning him and turning his statements, tongue-in-cheek, against themselves. After Mr Trump suggested registering American Muslims, for instance, Wajahat Ali wrote in The New York Times , “For the sake of efficiency, I created a card myself, listing my skin tone as ‘Caramel Mocha,’ my ethnicity as ‘Bollywood’ and my religion as ‘Sunny-Side Sunni.’” Mr Ali terms this sarcastic embrace of Islamaphobia and discrimination a “gallows humour.” It allows, he argues, for a “collective catharsis amid the anxiety.”

In the last week, however, the laughs have died down. On NBC’s “Late Night with Seth Meyers,” Mrs Clinton remarked, “You know, I have to say, Seth. I no longer think he’s funny.” The tone from his detractors on social media, too, has turned from eye-rolling and sarcasm to outrage and earnest condemnation. Laughing at Mr Trump has largely been a way of dismissing him, of refusing to take him seriously as a political candidate. But the longer his candidacy persists and the more repugnant his statements become, the less funny it all seems. If he started out as a joke, Mr Trump has now become a really, really bad one. More worryingly, it increasingly feels like the joke may be on those who never took him seriously. What is sobering them up isn't just Mr Trump's near-fascist thinking but the recognition that a sizable chunk of the American electorate agrees with him. Does humour have a role left to play?