The night of February 3, 2010, will forever be remembered as the Night of the Demonsheep.

It’s based, of course, on this instantly infamous web ad for Carly Fiorina, who wishes to be the next senator from California and who aims to take new frontrunner Tom Campbell down a peg:

Last night I called the ad “genius,” and a couple of folks weren’t sure if it was sarcastic, so let me lay out a few more thoughts. On its most basic level, the ad is a mess — even for a web-only ad, it is too long and too weird, and the arguments are all over the map. It begins by suggesting fiscal conservatives are sheep. The arguments about Campbell’s budget proposal are fine, but it goes on for too long, and gives too much detail. While the Exorcist music and occasional flashes of ominous livestock help punctuate it all, it could have and should have been summaried quicker: “He supported spending too much, borrowing too much, and raising taxes too much, and look where it left us.”

(A lot of readers suspect it’s actor Robert Davi doing the narration.)

And then there’s the “wolf in sheep’s clothing” theme, which leads into the glowing-eyed cybernetic Demonsheep. (The initial, split-second appearance of Demonsheep from behind the tree actually made Mrs. Campaign Spot jump out of her chair and exclaim, “What is that?!?”) Pick your pop-culture reference; the sheep is David Lynchian, Tim Burton-esque, or Cthulhu; I like to think of it as life imitating “The Far Side” cartoon.

On the other hand, the ad is genius in the sense that it instantly broke through a very noisy and crowded political environment, and got almost everyone who watched it to drop what they were doing and call their political junkie friends and say, “You have got to watch this.” In less than 24 hours, it has gotten 80,000 views.

Fiorina is behind, and she needs to shake up the race. After another day or two of mocking, it’s possible that this ad and the brouhaha will spur California media to look at Campbell’s record and see whether her criticisms are justified. And if that happens, then maybe he’ll lose some ground, and she’ll close the gap some. (On the other hand, the Chuck DeVore team has a DemonSheep.org site up already.)

This is a Hail Mary of an ad, which means there’s a very good chance that it won’t work. But a lot of the “traditional” advertised approaches wouldn’t have worked either, and would have just blended in with all the other ads in a busy election cycle. By comparison, ten years from now, if you hear the word, “demonsheep,” you will probably start giggling and know exactly what it was.

“Laugh while you can, puny human.”