In my day we used to Tweet with our mouths over something called a telephone.
"In my day we used to Tweet with our mouths over something called a telephone." Alex Wong / Getty

Humorous attack ads are not funny for a lot of reasons. The partisan nature of the joke-teller forecloses tension and surprise. The sophomoric tone needed to appeal to the largest group of people clashes with the wonky evidence needed to make a political point. Progressive group Not One Penny's high-dollar ad is no exception. But the constraints of the TV spot, which attacks Trump and the tax bill currently under "consideration" in the Senate this week (and which runs on Fox News all day tomorrow), did lead to an A+ joke.

Appreciation: I know they had to include the keyboard sound effects in the ad to fill the silence, but Trump fucking would be that guy who keeps the keyboard click sounds on just so that everyone within a 10-foot radius of the typing president would know he was producing a thought unit. Hatred of that sound is bipartisan, and associating it with Trump may be extremely effective.

One Small Critique: Glad to see that the Tax March (from the people behind Not One Penny) is still active, but Trump has famously not been "at a loss for words" when explaining his support of the GOP effort to cut taxes for corporations at the expense of teachers, the elderly, the sick, and the poor. It's just that the words he uses are lies or else overly simplistic. See for reference: the parts of his Twitter feed not dedicated to yelling at black people. See also: that time Trump told Democratic Senators that he'd be a "big loser" if the tax bill passed.

Okay, But For Real: McConnell wants to vote on this tax bill on Thursday. The problem is that the bill is bad. It's so bad Republicans don't even want us to know how bad it is. And when you tell them it's bad, their reasons for why the bill is not bad are, in fact, bad. ("We'll grow our way out of the $1.5 trillion deficit!" Narrator: We won't.) The court-packing scheme Republicans are trying to sneak into all the badness is bad, too. But what's worse is that the holdouts (McCain, Corker, Flake, Collins, Daines, Moran, Johnson) seem payoffable (with the exception of maybe the first three in that list) in ways that will make the bill badder. We'll see the quality of Flake and Corker's opposition when the Budget Committee (they're both members) makes a call on the bill tomorrow.

If you want to show up somewhere and scream about it (or network and create lasting political alliances that will carry you through this administration and on to the next one), the congressional advocates over at Indivisible have arranged a number of rallies in the Seattle area this week. (Including one that started 11 a.m. today at the Federal Building downtown.)

Otherwise, and as always, people who live in Blue states should call people who live in Red states and encourage them to tell their Senators to oppose the bill. Here's how you do that. Focusing on Flake, McCain, and Corker right now makes sense. People who live in Red states—especially Arizona, Utah, and Tennessee—should be blowing up the phone lines. It worked with Trumpcare. It might work again with taxes.