Eight days before the election, House Democrats' top super PAC looked at a map of America, found two districts Donald Trump won by double digits, and said, "Those. We'll take those."

House Majority PAC announced $2.54 million in new TV ads Monday: $2.16 million against Republican Rep. Brad Finstad in Minnesota's 1st District and $380,000 against Republican Rep. Victoria Spartz in Indiana's 5th. Trump won Finstad's district by 12 points. He won Spartz's by 17. That's not a swing district. That's a district that swung once, liked it, and stayed.

PAC president Mike Smith announced that "Democrats continue to expand the map and push Republicans further and further on defense." Expanding the map is a great strategy. So is buying a lottery ticket. Both cost money and both come with a press release.

To be fair, there's a poll. A KAAL-TV/SurveyUSA survey has Democrat Jake Johnson up two points on Finstad. Two points. Within the margin of error. In a district Trump carried by 12. Democrats read that poll the way a guy reads a horoscope that says he'll come into money. He doesn't check whose money.

In Indiana, Spartz is still leading Democratic state Sen. J.D. Ford. But the Cook Political Report moved the race from "Solid Republican" to "Likely Republican," and apparently that one-word downgrade was worth $380,000. That's a lot of cash for an adjective. Most campaigns pay that for a noun.

Here's the part they don't put in the ad. Politico ran a piece Monday under a headline every Democratic donor should tape to the fridge: "Why Dems' late House reaches don't usually pan out." Same day. Same party. Same money. The PAC and the newspaper basically did a split-screen: one side lighting cash on fire, the other side explaining how fire works.

Meanwhile, the people actually living in Minnesota's 1st are about to get two straight weeks of the same 30-second ad between every segment of the local news. They will learn Brad Finstad's name, his votes, and his middle school GPA. They will also learn nothing about their grocery bill, because that's not what the ad is about.

Republicans aren't exactly flawless here either. The GOP's own super PAC, Congressional Leadership Fund, pulled $6 million out of Florida's 25th, a district Republicans redrew specifically so they could win it. Imagine redesigning the house and then forgetting to move in.

But Democrats win the week. Because $2.54 million could fix a lot of things. It could fill potholes. It could cover a lot of groceries for a lot of families still wincing at the checkout line. Instead, it's buying airtime in Mankato to tell people who voted for Trump by a dozen points that they've been wrong the whole time. People love that. Nothing persuades a Minnesotan like a stranger from Washington explaining his own county to him.

Smith says Democrats are pushing Republicans "further and further on defense." Maybe. Or maybe they're just pushing their checkbook further and further from anyplace it could win.

So the map is expanding, the donors are paying, and the PAC has two districts Trump won by 29 combined points circled in red marker. At $2.54 million a pop, that's the most expensive way anyone has ever discovered where Minnesota is.

This article is satire. The Demorat is a parody news site; real facts are drawn from the linked sources, and jokes, invented scenes, and fictional characters are not real.

The real story that inspired this