WASHINGTON – Presidential candidates from both the Democratic and Republican parties were scrambling Wednesday morning after a memo began circulating Tuesday night indicating that they’re all ostensibly running to lead “The United States of America”, evidently one single country.

The revelation has the potential to pose significant challenges for candidates across the political spectrum, as until now, one party had appeared to believe it was running to govern a small, advanced, educated, Northern European social democracy while another had spent months campaigning for the highest office of a heavily-armed, homogenous, dystopian, libertarian theocracy.

Speaking off the record a spokesperson for one leading GOP candidate indicated their campaign was in crisis, saying “we’re becoming increasingly worried that our platform of defunding Planned Parenthood, advocating war crimes, and generally shitting on Mexicans may not have the broad appeal we’d once thought.” For their part several Democratic campaign operatives expressed doubt over whether citizens of a country that fought a bloody revolutionary war largely over taxation would be uniformly enthusiastic about all paying higher taxes.

Primary voters have also begun expressing new concern that as president any one of the remaining seven candidates might fail to advocate exclusively for their causes, and instead govern in the best interest of the citizens of The United States. Specifically, old, white, undereducated, lightly bigoted rural men see the potential for a president averse to allowing the private ownership of the FGM-148 Javelin anti-tank missile, while women, African-Americans, Latinos, Muslims, immigrants and most citizens of the world’s other 195 countries are uncertain that America’s next commander-in-chief won’t at some point kick another head of state right in the dick.

Perhaps least impacted by the development was Republican candidate Ben Carson, who was genuinely surprised to learn he was still running.

(L&B)