Days after President Donald Trump took office for the second time, a boatload of candidates vying to lead the Democratic National Committee crammed into a Washington auditorium plastered with MSNBC logos.

This was their last big forum before the vote to make the case that they had what it took to rescue their party from irrelevance.

The moderators called on a little-known contender, Quintessa Hathaway, to deliver the first opening statement. “I just want to give you all a little bit of something that’s been on my heart,” she told the audience.

Then, suddenly, unexpectedly, she broke into song. “When your government is doing you wrong,” she belted out, “you fight on, oh-oh, you fight on.”

It had only taken four minutes for the battle over the future of the Democratic Party to devolve into what critics likened to a scene from Portlandia, a comedy satirizing ultra-liberals — and it was a punchline that was clipped and replayed across social media in the days ahead. Things only got more surreal, and viral, from there.