How Trump and Vance went from a 'threat to democracy' to 'weird'

[brooklynite]

In the days since Vice President Kamala Harris has taken over the campaign against former President Donald Trump and his running mate JD Vance, Democrats are leaning into a new attack line against the Republican ticket: that they’re just really weird.

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.”

https://www.politico.com/news/2024/07/26/trump-vance-weird-00171470

[ms liberty]

1. I think I've seen creepy a couple of times too, and I think that also works

[Ocelot II]

2. "Weird" is perfect. Everybody gets it.

"Threat to democracy" is vague and abstract, though it's true. But Trump has always been weird in a thousand ways, and Vance is possibly even weirder. The point that these people are deeply abnormal in so many respects will resonate with people who don't think much about political theories, but who might not want weirdos running their government.

[niyad]

3. It also reduces them to joke status, not powerful and threatening. Will this

demotion help? I hope so.