The race to the bottom continues, courtesy of Dan Helmer, one of six Democrats hoping to face Virginia Republican Rep. Barbara Comstock this November. Helmer just compared President Trump to Osama bin Laden.
The comparison comes at the end of a new 30-second spot as the screen flashes from an image of the al Qaeda leader in some Afghan cave to the South Lawn. “After 9/11,” Helmer tells the camera, “the greatest threat to our democracy lived in a cave; today he lives in the White House.”
Except no. Trump is not as in any way analogous to the terrorist who masterminded the attack that toppled the World Trade Center, dented the Pentagon, and killed 2,996 people all at once. He can’t even be called the greatest threat to the nation today – not if we take terrorists, Kim Jong Un, and Vladimir Putin seriously.
At worst, Trump is a bumbling president with unpopular opinions and on occasion spectacularly bad judgment. Even the most vicious comedians call him an idiot. Not a terrorist.
Helmer makes that leap with his latest shock politics ad in hopes of courting progressive primary voters. That’s a problem. His candidacy is a mile marker on the journey toward hysteria and away from reason.
Granted, Helmer is also the joker who released this pitifully cringe-inducing ad. He probably won’t become the next voice of the Democratic Party, and he might not even win his primary. Still, the fact that Democratic leaders haven’t condemned this sort of fear mongering is troubling. But it’s what their base wants!
