US Democrats have spent recent days trying out a relatively new attack line on Donald Trump: that he is weird. The tactic is almost certainly calibrated to resonate with young and independent voters who, polls show, are moving from marked disinterest in the now-dropped matchup between Joe Biden and his presidential predecessor to engagement in the 100-day contest between Trump and Kamala Harris.
In a press release Thursday, vice-president and presumptive Democratic nominee Kamala Harris issued a list of the main takeaways of what Trump had given the American people. “Is Donald Trump OK?” the X message said. The seventh of nine entries was: “Trump is old and quite weird?”
At a fundraising event in Massachusetts on Saturday, Harris tried out the line again, describing what Trump and running mate JD Vance had been saying about her as “just plain weird”.
“I mean that’s the box you put that in,” Harris said after Trump had called her “a bum” the previous day and Vance disparaged her in 2021 as a “childless cat (lady)”.
i really hope they move past this “we need to use gentle soft language in our criticisms of rapist convicted felon con man trump” bullshit
Using hard language is seen by his supporters as an attack on them all and drives them into the defensive making Trump stronger. Calling him weird sidesteps that reaction and deflates Trump, especially if he launches a weird rambling speech as a response.
i see the point you’re trying to make… to think, all it took to beat trump this whole time was mollycoddling him and his followers…
like they’ve been doing for almost 10 years…
No, it’s making fun of him. The trick that always worked on him and nobody has been using lately is simply making fun of him. Do you remember how defensive he got about all the talk about him having “small hands”? That shit drove him nuts. This bruises his ego, and the man is all ego…
It turns out that the schoolyard name-calling tactics are very effective on him, but Democrats mostly feel they’re above that.
The previous approach was to focus on how he’s a dangerous fascist, which his supporters were able to spin as strength. Focusing on how he’s the kind of off-putting creep that you instinctively cover your drink as he walks by can’t be spun that way.
i see that now, and it makes perfect sense in hindsight. if i had kids, they wouldn’t be allowed anywhere near him
but also, fascism
That is language that Trump detractors like but doesn’t convince anyone new. If someone was supporting Trump, they aren’t going to be convinced by you re-stating that he’s a felon. Everybody knows that. If they support him at this point, they don’t care or they think it is an unfair attack because the arrest was political in whatever way. “Weird” strikes to his character which is at least a value judgement that you can reassess, and also relative to who he is running against.
You went easy on the lying treasonous, traitorous coward.
i genuinely shake my head sometimes at democrats’ strategy. “weird” is not a bad thing to many many people. it’s a term that’s ridiculously easy for someone to say “yea. i’m weird. so?”
and then what? “so, THERE!!!”?
recall also that one of the most D cities in a deep red state, austin, celebrates their weirdness.
ffs democrats. get your shit together
edit: i hope I’m wrong, and “he’s weird” actually does something, and I’ll be more than happy to eat crow if it catches on and has a positive effect
I’m one of those people, but fascists are REALLY not.
Seeing themselves as the only “normal” ones and declaring everything outside of the norm scary and evil is how they keep marginally functional in spite of enormous cognitive dissonance.
To a fascist, weird = abnormal = the OTHERS = evil
it’s not cognitive dissonance, it’s doublethink. there is no ‘dissonance.’ it seems insane, but they absolutely believe in 2 or more contradictory things with absolutly no qualms about it. they see no problem with bleating about “family values” while voting for a rapist adulterer with pornstar hush money problems.
Well duh, who could know better about family values than one who has had 3 official families and worked with beautiful women and girls so much? /s
Yes, Austin, known for its republican base. /s
Agreed. But if this gets more young people or low information voters to the polls, so be it.
I’d like to see something to address his wannabe dictator tendencies
there are SO many things they could attack, and they choose “let’s call him weird”
i get more annoyed the more i think about it
My guess is Harris’ polling of the younger demographic is showing they’re fed up with the vicious rhetoric that’s been bounced around. So words that don’t cut most people - but would annoy the hell out of Trump - are used … if for no other reason than it becomes this joke that can be laughed at vs. enraging people.
Maybe your annoyance (understandable) is part of the point? There are so many things to attack, so many legitimate concerns, that simply calling him weird could spark a little reflection in his supporters and would-be voters, let alone the obvious shock to Trump’s vanity.
It’s not something you can easily deny as a conspiracy theory or fake news or any other excuse about his words and behavior. The man is weird. And psychologically, I think it’s harder to defend a person described that way, or at least makes a defender get a little self-conscious. Trump being deemed weird is really indefensible, and I think it could work in deflating the cult of personality around him.
Not everyone can identify maniacal dictator rhetoric for what it is, and the power dynamic is clearly alluring to Trump supporters. However, knowing a weird person or even being called weird at some point is something almost everyone has experience with. It’s uncomfortable. It makes you ask yourself what it is about a person that makes them weird. I think they’re on to something here. It might give supporters pause and will most definitely give Trump a complex.
To be fair, they haven’t stopped using hard language either. They released a statement after his “you won’t have to vote ever again” rambling with very direct warnings about how dangerous he is and has been. “Weird” is just another line of attack, hoping to cut in a way that might resonate with some more than the (imo rightful) high stakes talk.