Brady Walkinshaw's alleged attack ad is so freaking soft—weak tea, thin gruel, watery cum—that it barely qualifies as a jab. But the pants shitting from Team Jayapal has been epic and dishonest. Danny Westneat assesses the poutrage in today's Seattle Times:

Voting attendance and rankings are shallow means to assess a lawmaker (there are many ways to have clout without passing bills). But they’re also fair game, and a regular trope in campaigns. When I saw this ad, my reaction was: “Is that all they’ve got?” But the Jayapal campaign played a whole deck of race, women and “Trump” cards. “The attacks, the demeaning of women’s accomplishments, enough,” says a counter ad she cut, showing Walkinshaw intermixed with footage of Trump.

“As a woman in office, I’m really saddened to see desperate, Trump-style attacks on women and their accomplishments,” echoed state Sen. Sharon Nelson, D-Maury Island, at a news conference organized by the Jayapal campaign.

Seattle City Councilmember Lorena Gonzalez suggested that Walkinshaw, who is Cuban-American, is a race-baiter. “When I ran for Seattle City Council, I was also subjected to ‘dog-whistle’ politics — being made to be the ‘other’ and having my race brought up in subtle ways,” Gonzalez said in a statement though the Jayapal campaign. “I am troubled by a narrative of making Pramila the ‘other’ in this race, and I feel the need to call it out here.”

One America, the immigrant-rights group Jayapal once headed, piled on, saying Walkinshaw’s ad served to “pit communities of color against each other.”

Uh, folks? You can see from my photo above that I’m Clueless White Guy. I’m also a voter in the 7th District. So help me out: How is what Walkinshaw did in any way racist or anti-women?

Walkinshaw's ad is in no way sexist or racist—unless common, anodyne, and legit assessments of an opponent's performance in office are out of bounds if your opponent is a woman and/or a person of color. So, yeah, no. If anyone is engaging in racist/sexist politicking here, it's Jayapal and her surrogates. (Credit where credit is due: they all managed to keep a straight face at that presser.) In an buttclenchingly PC place like Seattle, a calculated, disingenuous, politically-motivated accusation of racism and/or sexism is a much lower blow. The attack ad in this confrontation has Jayapal's fingerprints on it, not Walkinshaw's.

Back to Westneat:

[Jayapal] does have a thin record in elected office—she’s been in office less than two years. And she did miss a lot of votes. The effectiveness rating is a lame criticism, but it’s also factually true. But… racist dog-whistling? In a campaign between an Indian American and a Cuban American, what would be the point of whistling to racists anyway? And saying he demeaned all women, when what he did is critique the record of one woman, is demagoguery.

Perhaps Walkinshaw should go for it and release an actual attack ad. Jayapal's camp has already called him a racist and sexist and equated him to Donald Trump, all for the crime of taking a look at her voting record. (Showing up to vote is technically what we elect representatives to do.) What do they have left to throw at him? He's the Zodiac Killer?

Elisa Catrina, of the women who appeared in Walkinshaw's ad wrote a great piece for Medium...

When I volunteered to be in an ad for Brady Walkinshaw, progressive dreamboat running in Washington’s 7th Congressional district, I did so wrapped in the safe blanket of knowledge that nobody cares about local races. But that was before the ATTACKIEST ATTACK AD EVER. OH THE HUMANITY. (I will point out that the main allegations in here—that Jayapal has missed a lot of votes and sponsored a piddling amount of successful legislation—are accurate. What her supporters dispute is how they should be interpreted.) The bigger story to yours truly is that this ad immediately prompted a big response from Jayapal’s camp, with lots of “when they go low we go high”-ing and comparisons to Donald Trump.…

Wait. What?

Go read the whole thing.