Campaign season for the 2022 midterms has just crowned — and with it comes the return of glossy over-the-top candidate videos.
Teddy Daniels, a large Pennsylvanian, is running for a congressional seat in Scranton, Joe Biden’s backyard.
He’s following in the footsteps of House candidates like Madison Cawthorn (who won), Kim Klacik and Alek Skarlatos (who didn’t) in getting the Arsenal Media Group treatment.
For a handsome fee, Benny Johnson’s communications group will cut you a campaign ad from their DC office that follows their well-rehearsed formula: super-ultra-high-definition (like a Lil Nas X video), internetty soundbites, hyperlocal references and locations, demonstrations of your outsider credentials and the kind of unabashed patriotism that gives Europeans motion sickness. Then Benny himself will tweet it out, currying nationwide donations. Because in the political money game, it’s only a local veneer that counts: the cash can come from anywhere. Just ask Reverend Sen. Warnock!
Let Cockburn guide you through a closer look at Daniels’s diesel-powered all American ad, entitled ‘Elitist Suit & Tie Swamp Scum Are Selling Out America’.
Every single frame of it is worth watching.
Today’s politicians are bought & paid for HACKS who sell out America.
Joe Biden turned his back on Scranton Pennsylvania, and now he’s turned his back on America.
We need Conservative outsiders to drain the swamp & shake up Washington.
DONATE➡️ https://t.co/n6RymG6S7O pic.twitter.com/sdf93pjvwr
— Teddy Daniels for Congress (@DanielsCongress) July 28, 2021
We open in an indiscriminate restaurant to a soundtrack of Succession-style strings. An unidentifiable Swamp creature, cigar-in-hand, drinking a Moscow mule for some reason, gives the voiceover: ‘That’s better Teddy. Look at you now. See, if you don’t do it our way, we won’t back you. We pick the winners and losers around here.’
The camera slowly zooms in on Teddy Daniels, a bearded cueball in a collared shirt with a sweater wrapped around his shoulders, whose eyes flicker around the restaurants at the other patrons, who are all drinking martinis or Moscow mules for some reason. These characters appear to be the ‘Elitist Suit & Tie Wearing Swamp Scum’ of the title. Two of the diners are sitting at a table with framed photographs of Liz Cheney and Mitt Romney on it.
Did the diners bring them to the restaurant or are they part of the pre-existing restaurant décor? We don’t have time to find out.
Teddy, a man of the people, is drinking a glass of red wine. A tinnitus screech fades into the strings. Then Teddy speaks.
‘You know what? I’m not doing this fake, phony, elitist BS,’ he says, jabbing his finger at the fat cat he has chosen to take this dinner with. ‘It’s not me. I don’t need you, and I’m not gonna let you clowns muscle me.’ A guitar riff starts to fade in — here we go. ‘I’m not doin’ this for you.’
Teddy stands up and tears open a perfectly good checked button-up to reveal a t-shirt that reads ‘America First’. The other diners cock eyebrows, gasp and turn around. What the deuce?!
We’re all rock music now. It’s time for Teddy’s piece-to-camera. He is now wearing a different button-up shirt over his ‘America First’ t-shirt, one that is more ‘him’. ‘I despise swampy, sellout politicians,’ he says, walking towards the camera in the restaurant. He seems to mean it.
A flame-cut effect then takes us outside, where Teddy has put on sunglasses despite it being overcast. He is walking in slow-motion towards a helicopter, the mode of transport of the people. He gets in and flies somewhere while describing ‘establishment sellouts’ who are ‘completely out of touch with real America’ in the voiceover.
We flame-cut again to the side of the street, where the kind of military vehicle you’d see in a D-list zombie movie has pulled up. It has a ‘Trump 2020 fuck your feelings’ bumper sticker on the side and a couple of gun turrets.
The military truck is driven by a white man with a handlebar mustache. Also their black friend is there. See, they have one!
Flame-cut. Teddy is walking towards the camera again, carrying a firearm and talking about RINOs who care more about ‘appeasing the left’ than ‘election security’.
‘Time to bring out the big guns,’ Teddy says, as he rains bullets on a target. See what he did there?
‘And the big guns are the millions of men and women in this country who feel as though their voices aren’t being heard. I’ll be your voice,’ says Teddy, firing a bigger gun.
Teddy fires his guns for 20 seconds while informing us about his military record in voiceover. Once he’s done, he turns around and slow-motion walks towards the camera. Is this the only way he can travel anywhere without a helicopter or military truck?
Flame-cut again. We’re back on the road. It’s the Bikers for Trump! And who’s that rolling up on his hog, embracing their leader?
Notice that Teddy’s friend from the truck is chilling on the back of another pal’s bike. Who doesn’t love a close friendship group?
The bikers roll along the street as Teddy talks about how ‘we’ could ‘lose our freedom forever’. The crew pull up to what Google tells me is the Backroads Cafe and Dairy Bar in Newfoundland, Pennsylvania, as Teddy talks about socialism.
‘It’s time for we the people to take this country back from corrupt swamp creatures in both parties,’ Teddy says in the V/O as he embraces a Biker for Trump in a MAGA hat.
We’re in the café now and Teddy is talking to us through the camera. ‘I’m in this fight for my family. And I’m in this fight for your family. I’ve been a fighter my whole life. This is a fight that I won’t walk away from, and I’ve never backed down from anyone or anything in a fight.’ Teddy looks like he means it as his much younger wife stands up to join him in shot, carrying his young son. He will fight you. He will probably sleep with your wife too, and raise your son as his own.
‘Send me to Congress, so I can be your voice,’ Teddy concludes. His wife leads the bar in a chant of ‘America first!’
Gripping stuff. Benny Johnson tweeted the Daniels ad on Thursday with the caption: ‘This is the BEST GOP ad I have seen this cycle. Just perfect.’ Daniels followed its release with an appearance on Steve Bannon’s podcast.
Could Teddy be helicoptering, biking or slow-motion-walking into the House next year? Cockburn thinks it’s far too early to say, so he’s posing a more significant question: what’s Teddy’s favorite vintage of red wine?
