Nothing says “I love you” like a close-up of Mike Bloomberg’s face, right?
You can now wish your nearest and dearest a happy Valentine’s with a line of cards featuring some of the 2020 Democratic candidates. It’s the latest launch from Shelley Kim, a consultant and stand-up comedian who lives in Dupont Circle.
Hey my Valentines are done!! You can download these 2020 Valentines as a PDF through the link in comments. Print and pass these out to your friends! Sorry the Biden one is so creepy. pic.twitter.com/4Wurj3LzaL
— Shelley Kim BoSlice (@shell_gasoline) February 13, 2020
You may remember her cards from last year, which featured some left-leaning names (think AOC with “Roses are red/The House is now blue/All I want is free healthcare/And that you be my boo”) or her 2017 cards, which were inspired by the then fresh phrase “alternative facts.” (On one, Sean Spicer’s face is featured below the greeting “Eat this candy. Candy is good for you, according to my sources.”)
For Valentine’s Day 2020, Kim decided to focus on the some of the Democratic candidates. (She was going to try and exclusively feature the top-performing candidates from the Iowa caucus, but ultimately decided against it because “no one knows what’s accurate for Iowa.”)
So this holiday, you can show up to your dinner-for-two with an Amy Klobuchar card reading “I would never treat you like how I treat my staff,” or an Andrew Yang love note saying “You missed your chance on true love (and $1,000 a month).”
Kim spends a ton of time on these cards, which she makes using Photoshop and InDesign, but the hardest part is coming up with something witty to say about each person featured. Her favorite this year? “The Bernie one, just because it’s him,” she says (she’s ultimately a Sanders supporter, but like Elizabeth Warren, too). “But [the Joe Biden] one just came out a lot weirder than I intended it to.”
And fingers crossed the cards make it into the hands of some of the candidates themselves. Last year, when Pete Buttigieg was in town at Politics and Prose, Kim went and handed him and Chasten a copy of Buttigieg’s 2019 valentine. She said Chasten was stoked: “It’s not often you see someone who made a meme about you and your husband in real life,” she says.
While she’s charged a fee for her cards in past years, they’re free to download this year, and she’ll be handing some out when she performs a stand-up set Saturday at the Big Hunt.
Obviously, she hopes people get a kick out of the cards, but she also hopes they provide inspiration on a greater scale. “I just want people to vote,” says Kim.
Mimi Montgomery joined Washingtonian in 2018. She’s written for The Washington Post, Garden & Gun, Outside Magazine, Washington City Paper, DCist, and PoPVille. Originally from North Carolina, she now lives in Del Ray.
