A month ago, almost no one believed that Democrats could flip a Senate seat in Mississippi, a state that Donald Trump won by nearly 23 points in 2024. Even in a year when the party was aggressively targeting conservative strongholds like Texas and Kansas, it seemed like a hopelessly long shot. The race was so off the radar that pollsters essentially ignored it, as did the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, which in August dispersed $40 million in funds to key battleground states — but not to Mississippi.
Then in mid-October, Democratic candidate Scott Colom released an ad seizing on a disastrous misstep by his opponent, incumbent Cindy Hyde-Smith. In a TV interview earlier in the year, she brushed off concerns over the high price of beef by suggesting, “You know, you have so many proteins to choose from.”
Colom spun the gaffe — which suggested that Hyde-Smith was profoundly disconnected from the concerns of her constituents — into a focal point of his campaign, setting up “pick your protein” taco trucks at rallies and campaign events around the state.
The ad garnered him national attention. The 30-second spot features a trio of everyday Mississippians offering blunt responses to her “let them eat canned tuna” moment. “Pick another protein? Sheee-iiiiiiit,” says a middle-age white guy, stretching the word to two syllables as he flips burgers on a grill. “I’d rather pick another senator instead.”
He’s followed by a Black woman, munching on fried catfish at a no-frills restaurant. “She done lost her damn mind,” she says. “I’d rather pick another Senator.” The ad cuts to an older white woman, looking exasperated as she browses the freezer section of the grocery story, chimes in: “Pick another protein? What the f--?”
Released on social media, the clip quickly went viral, racking up 2.5 million views within days — and bringing much-needed attention to a suddenly winnable race. According to the New York Times, a Democratic Super PAC subsequently “poured $1.2 million into the race, and later invested another $1 million.”
As of Friday morning, Colom is up by nearly 200 votes and appears tantalizingly close to becoming the first Black person elected to the Senate from Mississippi since Reconstruction. The “pick another protein” ad — scathingly funny but also relentlessly on-message — may have turned the Magnolia State into an unlikely battleground.
The commercial resonated in part because it was created by Colom and Ryan Sayles, a content creator based in Jackson, rather than by slick consultants in DC. “What’s so great about that ad going viral is it was a Mississippi message, and it was developed by people in Mississippi,” Colom, a district attorney with a remarkably high prosecution rate, recently told Mississippi Public Broadcasting.
Colom, who also starred in an inspired Sinners spoof, is one of several Democratic candidates who proved that making voters laugh is a highly effective campaign strategy.
Countless factors contributed to the Democrats’ seismic victories across the country this week. While Trump backed some of the most reprehensible Republicans in recent memory, Democrats put forth young, attractive candidates who focused with laser-like precision on the issues that mattered most to voters, like corruption and the cost of living. They also know how to land a punchline.
Some of Tuesday’s biggest winners have a natural flair for comedy, and roasted their opponents to devastating effect on the campaign trail. These candidates were ruthless but not mean-spirited, and followed one of the most important rules of comedy: always punch up, never punch down. They showed empathy to voters trying to make ends meet and living in terror of ICE raids, but had zero mercy for Republicans backing Trump’s cruel agenda.
Senator Jon Ossoff, who won reelection in the ostensible swing state of Georgia by 18 points, went viral with devastating zingers aimed at his opponent, Mike Collins (e.g., accusing him of “hiring half the Third Reich” to staff his campaign office). He also single-handedly turned Trump’s bizarre relationship with one of his aides into a national news story with a single barb about how the president would rather “build his ballroom and travel with Natalie” than do his job.
Dr. Abdul El-Sayed’s pugilistic wit was on display throughout his campaign against Republican Mike Rogers (which he won by nearly seven points). When Trump said he was full of shit, El-Sayed had the perfect retort: “At least I don’t let mine go in the middle of the office.”
He repeatedly responded to ugly racist attacks with disarming humor. “Do not believe the people who say I’m for sharia law,” he said in a recent campaign stop. “I’m for shawarma law.” A clever ad featuring El-Sayed’s white grandparents skewered right-wing fear-mongering over his Islamic faith:
Like Colom, he stayed relentlessly on message, focusing on core issues like the cost of living, while cracking jokes that appealed to the people of his home state: “J.D. Vance called me a little weasel today. I’m like, no, no, no. What you’re talking about is a fucking wolverine. You can take your buckeye and go shove it somewhere else.” El-Sayed’s name may sound foreign to some, but he is clearly well-versed in a cherished American pastime: trash-talking.
With their artful zingers and targeted trolling, Democrats like Ossoff and El-Sayed helped win back both houses of congress and flip numerous governorships across the country. They also reclaimed comedy from the right.
During his eight years in the White House, Barack Obama understood that he could reach more people through pop culture — especially late night TV, podcasts, and web series —than traditional news platforms. As he reminded us last month with a riff about the Cheesecake Factory that drove Trump bananas (and that Republicans desperately tried to turn into a culture war issue), Obama has a knack for comedy. The former president can be devastatingly funny whenever he sets aside the soaring rhetoric for a little mudslinging. The most infamous example is the WHite House Correspondents Dinner in 2011, where he roasted Trump so harshly that he decided to run for president as revenge.
Unfortunately for Democrats, many people find Trump funny — or at least they once did — and his insult-comic schtick was key to his political ascent. In 2017, critic Emily Nussbaum considered how Trump used jokes to win a surprise victory over Hillary Clinton. “His rallies boiled with rage and laughter, which were hard to tell apart,” she wrote, likening him to comedy relics like Don Rickles and Rodney Dangerfield — someone people liked because he “tells it like it is.” What that really meant, of course, was that Trump wasn’t afraid to be racist, sexist, ableist, or homophobic.
Comedy, or what passes for it, also played a crucial role in his 2024 comeback. During that campaign, Trump actively courted “anti-woke” comedians like Theo Von and Andrew Schulz, who helped him make pivotal gains with young male voters.
These days, Trump’s comic timing ain’t what it used to be. He’s more likely to ramble incoherently about men’s backsides, Bermuda grass, or veined marble than craft a pithy nickname for one of his adversaries (e.g. “Little Marco.”)
His would-be successor, J.D. Vance, seems physically incapable of landing a punchline.
The vice president, who is now frantically trying to distance himself from Trump in order to salvage his 2028 prospects, only seems to go viral when he says or does something awkward or embarrassing. Whether he’s trying to order donuts like a normal person, running like a toddler in a wet diaper, denouncing the “fart left,” laughing at his own lame jokes, or getting blatantly ignored by the Bengals, Vance is a master of unintentional cringe comedy — the star of a one-man reboot of Veep.
Democrats rediscovered the power of comedy this year, which is a good thing. But there’s an important caveat: in 2026, it still seems like men, and not women, are allowed to wield humor as a political weapon. Female politicians are attacked for laughing too much or too loudly, but are also criticized for their unwillingness to “lighten up.” For most women in politics, being funny on the campaign trail is simply a liability they can’t afford.
If politics run downstream of culture, it’s useful to remember that major magazines once ran articles with headlines like “Why Women Aren’t Funny.” Thankfully people like Tina Fey have proven this idea dead wrong. Maybe in the next blue wave, women will get to crack a few jokes, too.
Meredith Blake is the culture columnist for The Contrarian.
Lest we not forget, however, Ann Richards, rest her hilarious soul.