Virtue-signaling is so easy and ego-flattering that even progressives may be tired of it.  As a means of grabbing attention, it is so passé that underdogs in Democrat primary races have to move on to other, more demanding means of moral exhibitionism.  At least that's the best explanation I can come up with for a surpassingly stupid campaign video featuring Levi Tillemann, a Democrat vying for his party's nomination for the House of Representatives in Colorado's Sixth District.

Tillemann, who badly trails Democrat Jason Crow in the primary race, created a campaign video showing him pepper-spraying himself in the eyes, which seems an obvious appeal to the S&M community, which I understand trends strongly Democrat, but that is not what he claims.  Lukas Mikelionis of Fox News reports on what Tillermann says is his point:

Levi Tillemann, who's trying to woo the voters in the upcoming party's primary in less than two weeks, criticized President Trump's suggestion to arm school officials and teachers with guns, claiming pepper spray is a better alternative to stop potential school shooters.

"I'm calling on Congress to stop talking past each other and try something new," Tilleman says in the video.  "Empower schools and teachers with non-lethal self-defense tools, like this can of pepper spray."

You can watch the auto-pepper spray segment of his three-minute video here:

I give him S&M props for spraying right into his own eyes.  There is no doubt he took some pain, and he emerges smiling from the soapy tub of water he dunked his head in.

But as a demonstration of a means of defending school classrooms without a gun, it fails.  One has to be within a foot or two of the armed perp, holding the pepper spray out in a threatening fashion in order to produce the same disabling result that Tillemann produced on himself.  What kind of armed gunman seeking murder allows someone to get that close?  Only an inattentive or suicidal gunman would permit such an approach.

What Tillerman doesn't understand or can't admit is that a firearm can function over a much greater distance than a can of pepper spray.

But of course, just watching the video proves that he is not all there, and not to be trusted with any political power.