Few things transcend party lines anymore, but making aggressively cringeworthy political ads is still a both sides problem. A new ad from a Democratic candidate is now challenging a Republican's for heavyweight champion of advertising Hell. Dan Helmer is one of a host of Democrats challenging Republican Barbara Comstock for Virginia's 10th district congressional seat. He's also a U.S. Army veteran and a Rhodes Scholar. But if this ad is anything to go on, he should consider beefing up his communications team:

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We start off with a ham-fisted foray straight into Top Gun parody, complete with aviators, military jacket, and of course, title font and wordplay on "Danger Zone."

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The scene Helmer is parodying is not even the one that features the Kenny Loggins classic. This is already a mess.

The ad leans hard into the fact that Helmer is an army veteran—he served in Iraq and Afghanistan—throughout. This includes a shirt that reads, "VETERAN."

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Surely there is a more artful way to introduce this essential piece of Helmer's background?

We'll never know, because we're on to the point of the ad, which doesn't actually have a whole lot to do with his military service: Barbara Comstock, like many congressional Republicans in recent months, is reluctant to hold town hall meetings with her constituents. Helmer declares, in a conversation sequence I had to watch through a tiny gap in my fingers, that he has a solution that's "one better" than a town hall. He picks up the mic...

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...and this happens.

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You've lost that centrist feeling/'cause you've been right wing appealing.



No. Just no. Even if you hate Top Gun, this is offensive. I'm not sure this would fly in an election for eighth grade class treasurer. And the message here is that the Democratic candidate is ... a centrist offering no specific policy? Is the expectation that the viewer will be singing along to this? The only winner here is the actor cast as Comstock, who was hopefully paid for this but did not have to show her face.

At the very least, though, Helmer offered some self-awareness at the end while admitting to the watching world that, yes, he really did approve this message. That's in short supply in our politics these days, so credit where it's due. (Also, who knows? Maybe this will be effective. Our politics have, after all, gone completely mental.)

That self-awareness was missing from an ad from the 2016 campaign from dubiously populist goofball Paul Nehlen, a Trump Train hanger-on who challenged Speaker of the House Paul Ryan in a Republican primary. This thing is almost self-satirical in the way painfully oblivious things can be:

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They could certainly both learn something from another ad, this one from yet another opponent of Paul Ryan's: Randy Bryce, a union iron worker who goes by the nickname Iron Stache. He released an ad full of heart, one that struck a perfect tone for today's political climate. It also has the benefit of not looking like something one of his staffers got their little brother to make in exchange for six bucks and jumbo size Mountain Dew:



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Holy shit. This ad from @IronStache announcing his run against Paul Ryan is something. Take a couple minutes. Watch. #WI01 pic.twitter.com/oveJZVle2c — Tim Hogan (@timjhogan) June 20, 2017

Jack Holmes Politics Editor Jack Holmes is the Politics Editor at Esquire, where he writes daily and edits the Politics Blog with Charles P Pierce.

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