Just plain weird
Why it is working so damn well
“We’re not afraid of weird people. We’re a little bit creeped out, but we’re not afraid.”
Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz
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Democrats are embracing a new attack line against the Republican ticket that I never would have predicted a couple of weeks ago. It’s one of the simplest insults you can imagine. It’s something I hear my friend’s seven year old say almost every day. It’s simple. It’s straight to the point and it is effective as hell.
The Republicans ARE JUST REALLY WEIRD.
As Politico explained:
Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz , a potential Harris running mate who’s been using this description for months, said it during his first viral TV appearance of the week, and then in others. The Democratic Governors Association, which Walz leads, amplified it on social media. And the Harris campaign has adopted it as well, incorporating the label repeatedly this week in press releases and posts on X and TikTok.
As this simple and quintessentially Midwestern description of Trump and Vance catches on, it marks a notable rhetorical shift — away from Biden’s apocalyptic, high-minded messaging toward a more gut-level vernacular that may better capture how many voters react to far-right rhetoric of the kind Vance in particular trades in.
“It perfectly describes the uneasiness people feel. It’s how people who don’t live and breathe politics every day react to hearing the Republican vice presidential candidate denigrate people without children,” said Tim Hogan, a Democratic strategist who worked on the 2020 presidential campaign of another Minnesotan, Sen. Amy Klobuchar. “It’s simple. It’s how you might talk to your neighbor about the crazy political climate we’re living in.”
That’s exactly why it works. It is normal people speak.
The world has been weird for some time now and Trump has been weird for ages. It’s only gotten weirder now that JD Vance is chugging his Diet Mountain Dew out on the campaign trail.
These attacks resonate to normal people who don’t enjoy having troublemakers at their thanksgiving table. Walz is your loving dad, and Trump is your Drunk uncle.
But it goes beyond the fact that identifying the Trump campaign as weird is appealing (it is).
But there’s more.
The Trump campaign messaging is centered around three things (1) bullying and authoritarian rhetoric; (2) painting liberals as perverted anti-Americans who want to destroy family values; and (3) painting themselves as Pleasantville 2.0, the normal orthodoxy against which everyone else should be compared.
The weird thing goes after all of these angles. It takes the wind out of the Republican sails and reveals the cowardice behind the bullying. Trump is constantly calling people “nasty,” I can’t even type that without making the cringe emoji on my actual face. The bullying is so bizarre, so weird, so embarrassing for him and any normal human would be ashamed to say the words that come out of his mouth on the regular.
Trump wants us to view him as a strong man dictator. Libs are weak and the people who bully us go to incredible parties (rallies) and feel empowered by communal bluster. They scream about their enemies, and feel incredibly cool in their matching outfits. The “weird” thing bends that narrative. What if everyone is actually laughing at them? Instead of edgelords, they are lamelords. Many of the conservative men online, with their guns and their assertion that women shouldn’t work, thrive on the belief that they are the ones representing family values. But of course it’s only their family they (theoretically) care about.
MAGA has rebranded old-school puritanism into modern day politics, but at it’s core it’s regressive and predatory. Pete Buttigieg made this connection, saying Vance’s “weird style” was going to bring about “weird policies.”
Vibes will take us farther than most people think. I still remember the 2004 campaign when Bush painted Kerry has an out-of-touch elitist who windsurfed on Nantucket. But for Trump, Vance and most of the Republican party these days - the weirdness extends to a set of policies that aim to control all our lives. And that’s a weird thing to do.
One of the best things about calling them weird is that it is almost impossible to respond to without seeming incredibly lame:
Try to read this without flashing back to middle school: “The whole thing is a con job. ‘Just plain weird.’ You know who’s plain weird? She’s plain weird. She’s a weird person. Look at her past, look at what she does, and look at what she used to say about herself.” Trump said it trying to respond to the weird attacks.
The thing about “weird” is that it’s impossible to turn around on someone else. It’s impossible to rebrand. It’s not a specific behavior or policy or action, it’s a fucking vibe and when you try to fix it you only make it worse.
Trump’s rhetoric is constant and heated and pointed. It’s a never ending buckshot of insults that most of us normals cannot stand having to listen to. Weird is more like a moldy sandwich thrown in the enemy’s direction.
Weird is kind of a fart and walk away.
In its very meekness as an insult it illustrates a difference between life under the Harris and Trump regimes.
Thomas Friedman, New York Times opinion columnist and noted man of the people, says that the “weird” framing is bad because it will alienate the “ white, working-class, non-college-educated men and women, who … feel denigrated and humiliated by Democratic, liberal, college-educated elites. They hate the people who hate Trump more than they care about any Trump policies.”
This is the type of reasoning that has gotten us milquetoast messaging from Democrats for the last 30 years while absolute chaos cream has risen to the top of the Republican party.
Weird is strangely what we need right now. Weird feels like a relief.
Our shared joy over this juvenile characterization won’t last, but it is exactly the vibe we needed right now.
I love it. I think using such a "schoolyard" taunt against them helps de-legitimize their positions and helps folks realize that we shouldn't be regarding them as serious adults with serious policies. They're not, they're just weird.
I really find it humorous that they are so bothered by being called weird. It gives me a little bit of joy.