Joe McConnell
Since launching her campaign for the White House nearly two weeks ago, Kamala Harris has attacked Donald Trump as a threat to individual freedom, economic security and the rule of law in the United States.
But the vice president and her Democratic allies have found a new way to describe Trump and the Republican Party that is unnerving their opponents: describing them as “weird.”
“Some of the things he and his running mate are saying are just weird,” Harris said at a fundraiser last weekend, as the audience laughed. “I mean, that’s the box you put that stuff in, right?”
Democrats have been trying for years to paint Trump and his supporters as part of a far-right fringe of American politics, including aVsceker the January 6, 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol, with mixed success.
But Trump’s running mate, Ohio Sen. J.D. Vance, has made uncompromising views on abortion and disparaging comments about women, highlighting a new line of attack by Democrats. Jokes like Vance’s in a 2021 speech that America was run by “childless cat ladies” have gone viral online, giving the new strategy a boost.
“These are weird people on the other side, they want to take your books away, they want to get into your exam room, that’s what it comes down to,” Tim Walz, the Democratic governor of Minnesota and Harris’ running mate, told MSNBC two days aVsceker she entered the race.
An independent group of Harris supporters called “Won’t Pac Down” last month launched a commercial called “These Guys Are Just Weird” that has since gone viral and featured a series of creepy male “Maga Republicans” claiming they want “government to be a lot more involved in your sex life.”
“These views that mainstream Republicans are holding in many cases are honestly just bizarre,” said Travis Helwig, a television producer who created the ad, which is aimed at younger voters.
He added that the attack appears to have resonance because, while Trump and his allies “enjoy being called threats to democracy,” “‘weird’ is clearly something that irritates them” even more.
“It looks like they’re really falling a little bit,” he added.
Trump and his allies have failed to come up with an effective response. During his appearance at a conference for black journalists in Chicago this week, the former Republican president bizarrely questioned Harris’s black identity, saying it was forced, sparking a fierce backlash from across the political spectrum.
On Thursday, he appeared on a conservative podcast trying to defend himself. “I’m a lot of things, but I’m not weird,” Trump said.
Republicans, meanwhile, accuse Democrats of being petty and hypocritical. “This whole ‘they’re weird’ thing about Democrats is stupid and childish. This is a presidential election, not a high school prom,” Vivek Ramaswamy, a former biotech investor who ran for the Republican nomination but dropped out and endorsed Trump, wrote on X.
Democrats held their ground. “If Republican leaders don’t like being called weird, creepy, and authoritarian, they might try not being weird, creepy, and authoritarian,” Hillary Clinton, the former secretary of state and first lady, also wrote in X.
Democratic strategist Martha McKenna said Harris’ campaign approach reflects a shiVscek from Biden’s message. Not only is she focusing on the concept of defending “freedom” more directly, she’s also bringing some levity to the criticism.
McKenna said, “I think the Biden campaign has been very focused on the threat to democracy and very high-level concepts that are still very important and very relevant to the presidential campaign. But with this change of candidate, there comes a change of language and a moment in time where you can do a little bit of an update.”
The shakeup in Harris’s campaign comes as she builds out her team of political advisers ahead of the November election, less than 100 days away.
While Harris is confirming her role as campaign chair for Jen O’Malley Dillon (the same role she held for Biden), she has also brought in David Plouffe and Stephanie Cutter, former political advisers to Barack Obama, to help her.
Beyond the “weird” trope, Harris’s campaign continues to focus on serious issues facing Republicans and the implications of the election.
At a fundraiser on Fire Island on Friday, Harris’ husband Doug Emhoff said, “We need to push back against that despicable person and his little accomplice,” referring to Trump and Vance, respectively, and calling the Republican vice presidential nominee an “extremist and an opportunist.” “We know who he is. He’s told us. He literally wants to change the way you all live, the way we all live,” Emhoff said.
Amy Walter, an independent political analyst at the Cook Political Report with Amy Walter, said Harris recognizes that while attacks on Republicans’ weirdness may be appealing in the moment, the election will likely be decided by how swing voters perceive the economy.
“Harris’ first ad doesn’t say Trump is ‘weird,’ but instead argues that Trump ‘wants to take our country backwards by giving tax breaks to billionaires and corporations and ending the Affordable Care Act,’” Walter wrote in a statement Friday.
However, the barbs against Trump and his allies are expected to continue, with the line about weirdness entrenched in talking points.
“[Trump] “He is clearly older and stranger than when America first met him,” Transportation Secretary and possible Harris running mate Pete Buttigieg told Fox News Sunday last month.
