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 think this is to try to achieve two things.
First, criticizing / annoying Trump.
Second, to try to recast Harris as the more mainstream American. Your typical mayo-American suburban mom type’s immediate reaction to Harris is going to revolve around a comparison of skin tones and evaluation of just how other Harris is. Pointing out that Trump is weird implicitly implies that Harris is normal by contrast.
Same reason she’s going to pick some completely uninteresting Generic White Guy as her running mate.
Yes. This is a careful, calculated, psychological move, just like you said.
It’s very clever. By asking if Trump is weird, the natural response of a human is to check Trump’s actions and traits against your natural biases and expectations based on your ‘in group’, either to evaluate if he’s weird or to try to defend him by building a rebuttal. Unless you hang out with racist billionaire authoritarian narcissists often, he’s going to be very weird to nearly everyone.
And again like you said, it takes the wind out of the most obvious counter to Kamala, her ‘otherness’.
It’s brilliant.
I agree with you. I read an article (can’t remember where it was from) that basically said right wingers have become detached from reality and normal America because they are insulated in their little online world and social media safe spaces. The general public has already heard that Trump and his ilk are a threat to democracy, this point has already been made. Highlighting the fact they are weird, gross and lack basic human decency is a brilliant move, like you said.