If Virginia is a sign of the times under the Joe Biden administration, then Democrats are in really, really big trouble:

Democratic Virginia governor candidate Terry McAuliffe's campaign is using Google ads to promote articles from news organizations, but swapping the original headlines on the search results page with ones written by the campaign itself — a novel political advertising method.

The Google ads purchased by McAuliffe's campaign feature links to news and opinion articles about his Republican opponent Glenn Youngkin from Axios and The Washington Post. The ads show up at the top of search results for keywords such as "Glenn Youngkin," and include a disclosure that they are advertisements, as well as an additional tag required for political advertisements that indicate they're paid for by the McAuliffe campaign.

Every resident in Virginia right now:

Seriously, the desperation on display here is just painfully awkward:

An Axios article with the title "Virginia Governor's race features Taylor Swift," appears in Google search results, for instance, but the McAuliffe campaign opted for a different title in its paid advertising link to the same article: "Glenn Youngkin - Betrayed Taylor Swift."

Hoo boy.

Seriously: Galactic-level cringe factor aside, is this even legal?

"It could reasonably be interpreted as Axios did a story paid for by the candidate," said Al Tompkins, senior faculty with the Poynter Institute, a journalism training organization in St. Petersburg, Fla. "And that's not okay."

An Axios spokesperson declined to comment on the ads.

Awkward!