"Pointing and laughing": Democrats leaned in on "weird" and experts say it's working
With Vice President Kamala Harris leading the charge, Democrats have rallied en masse around labeling former President Donald Trump and his running mate, Sen. JD Vance, R-Ohio, as "weird" — a move that's appeared to have sent the Republican candidate and his allies scrambling for an adroit counter.
Democrats have brandished the label in interviews and online, notes the Associated Press, highlighting Vance's comments on abortion and attacks on political leaders who don't have children. They've also used the "weird" attack to reframe concerns around right-wing policy ideas that threaten civil rights and other basic freedoms, such as book bans and anti-LGBTQ legislation.
As it grows in popularity — and goes viral on social media — the "weird" branding appears to have offered Democrats a hold over far-right Republicans that the party rarely saw when President Joe Biden led its ticket. The new attack line also reflects a departure from the rhetorical strategy of President Joe Biden's campaign, which experts told Salon could prove to be an effective change in bolstering Harris' bid for the presidency.
"I haven't seen a rhetorical strategy this good, effective and fun in a long time. This was really sharp," David Karpf, a professor of strategic political communication at George Washington University, told Salon. Much of that sharpness, he argued, can be attributed to the "intervening eight years" between Trump's 2015 political debut and now, when "all the normies have been driven out of the Republican party."
"When Democrats are now saying, 'These guys just sound a bit weird,' it's because they've all been talking to each other for long enough that if you're not part of the Republican cinematic universe, none of it makes any sense," Karpf said. "When you take a step back, their policy proposals are serious and dangerous, but they're also just so off-putting and ridiculous."
The "weird" strategy roll out began with Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, who's been characterizing far-right Republicans' behavior and proposals as such for months, during an appearance on MSNBC last month, in which he called Trump and Vance "just weird." Walz, a contender to be Harris' running mate, doubled down on the point during a subsequent CNN segment, noting Trump's repeated, odd references to Hannibal Lecter, the fictional serial killer from the film "Silence of the Lambs," in his rally speeches.
Harris' campaign quickly adopted the rhetoric, first deploying it in a news release responding to a Trump's Fox News appearance last week, including in a list of takeaways on his performance: "Trump is old and quite weird?” In another instance, the campaign proclaimed that that “JD Vance is weird," citing his support for abortion bans, while in another a campaign spokesperson argued Vance had “spent all week making headlines for his out-of-touch, weird ideas.”
Other Democrats soon picked up the torch. Sens. Brian Schatz of Hawaii and Chris Murphy of Connecticut last week posted a video dubbing Vance's past remarks about restricting the political power of childless Americans "a super weird idea."
Harris later cemented the "weird" characterization as the Democratic attack line of the moment at her first fundraiser since becoming the likely Democratic nominee, noting Trump's "wild lies about my record and some of what he and his running mate are saying — it is just plain weird.”
“I mean that’s the box you put that in, right?” she told the Massachusetts crowd last Saturday.
The label's use has only erupted from there, with some Democrats even hurling the branding of "weird" at far-right policy at-large. Just Monday, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., wielded the label against former GOP presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy after he bemoaned the tactic as "dumb" and "juvenile" on X, formerly Twitter.
"It’s an incel platform, dude. It’s SUPER weird. And people need to know," the congresswoman posted.
Jacob Neiheisel, a University at Buffalo professor of political science, told Salon that campaigns regularly try to brand the opposition by latching onto negative symbols or language and shaping it to their ends. Previous campaign efforts to brand opposing candidates as "weird" in some way have seemed to work in the past, he explained, pointing to the attack ad against then-Gov. Mike Dukakis, D-Mass., from then-Vice President George H. W. Bush during the 1988 election cycle that tanked the Democratic nominee's campaign as an example. The ad mocked Dukakis' appearance in a combat tank, making him an object of ridicule.
"That was probably effective for other reasons, but he looked ridiculous," Neiheisel said, noting that the imagery of "this diminutive guy in this massive helmet and this enormous tank" wasn't "a good look" for Dukakis. "Those kinds of things are associated with ads we think of as being particularly effective."
Democrats' current rhetorical strategy works so well because it focuses on style, Karpf argued. It positions the current far-right platform as "out of character with normal Americana" and at odds with more traditional, Reagan-era conservatism. In doing so, it paints policy ideas now popular on the right as strange deviations from American values.
"We have people coming around saying, 'Yeah, we need to end no fault divorce." Like what are you talking about, man?" Karpf said.
The emphasis on the absurdity of the current Republican platform strikes a marked contrast with the more serious refrain of the Biden campaign, which sought to highlight the potential danger of the former president winning back the White House: Trump and his policies pose a "threat to democracy."
Neiheisel said he suspects that the Democratic Party found that mobilizing the electorate on an "abstract concept" didn't amount to the "home run that they hoped it would be" and shifted gears as a result.
The reason for the failure of the "threat" framing to energize voters could be the "very different things" Americans mean when they indicate on surveys that "defense of democracy is a big issue," he argued. "You'll get some fairly high number of Republicans saying that they're concerned about democracy, but it's not the kinds of things that Democrats are concerned about."
Karpf added that, because of the length of the United States' election cycle, voters are left "stewing" on a serious message such as Biden's for months because they can't take any tangible actions until November. In the meantime, he said, alarming rhetoric from the former president — such as Trump's claim last week that, should he win, Christians won't have to vote again — become "normalized."
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"So what 'weird' [by] focusing on style does is it allows the Democrats to talk about this in ways that are actually fun and shareable," Karpf said. "They are pointing and laughing at these people who want to do awful things and getting other people involved and saying, 'Yeah, that's off-putting. That doesn't sound like America at all.'"
That, Karpf continued, "works real well because it's a good way to pass the time and also spread the message, as opposed to being the people who are pounding the table saying, 'Take Project 2025 seriously, and please keep taking it as seriously for another four months until we can finally vote."
Trump's allies have attempted to volley the attack back to Democrats and Harris, specifically. Over a video of Walz calling the former president and his running mate "weird," Trump campaign spokesman Steven Cheung said on X, falsely, that the vice president and her supporters were "weird" themselves for "trying to gaslight everyone into thinking the shooting was staged," a reference to the attempt on Trump's life last month (Harris has never suggested the attempt was "staged").
Donald Trump Jr. did the same Monday on X, writing: "You know what’s really weird? Soft on crime politicians like Kamala allowing illegal aliens out of prison so they can violently assault Americans.”
But despite Trump's and his allies' efforts, Neiheisel said the reversal tactic hasn't yielded very convincing results.
"It's a little bit schoolyard in some ways," he said. "I don't know that that's necessarily a position of strength for them to be in. You don't really want to be forced in a position where you're adopting your opponent's agenda and you're using their same kinds of language and tactics."
The Republican counters to Harris and Democrats' "weird" branding, he added, also feel "a little rushed" as though the party didn't anticipate Biden bowing out of the race like he did or have a great contingency plan in place for such an outcome.
Karpf said the "weak" Republican response signals that they "haven't found their footing yet."
"Republicans are still stumbling trying to find any sort of coherent response to it," he argued, noting that the back-and-forth, particularly between the presidential candidates, reminds him that Harris "is a prosecutor and Donald Trump doesn't do well with prosecutors." Democrats, he predicted, will continue to deploy the attack line until the GOP offers an "effective retort."
"I don't think we're going to be hearing this for the next 97 days, but I think we're going to be focused on this for a while because they need to come up with a rejoinder," he said.
