Dems Finally Crack the MAGA Cheat Code
Just a week into the campaign, Team Harris figured out how to talk about Trump
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For years, decades maybe, Democrats have been trapped by an inescapable paradox. Their commitment to tolerance forced them to tolerate anyeverything.
All opinions deserve respect.
All religions are equal.
As I always used to say in my obnoxious way, if that’s all true, then my opinion that not all opinions deserve respect deserves respect. Cuz it’s an opinion, see?
This approach to differences left Democrats poorly equipped to defend themselves, let alone attack the enemies of democracy. Because most people understand intuitively that not all ideologies are equal. Not all religions are equal. Democracy > fascism. Quakerism > thuggeeism.
Donald Trump has helped remedy this dilemma. The Democratic Party is now pretty clearly intolerant of fascism. But that doesn’t solve their political problem.
Most people (including me) don’t have a super-scholarly understanding of fascism. If they like a guy, they like a guy and name-calling him is more likely to backfire than hit the target if your audience doesn’t already think of the target as fascist.
Pres. Joe Biden’s campaign strategy — portraying Trump as an existential threat to democracy — wasn’t working.
Now, the Kamala Harris team is trying something new. Ish. It both seems to be working and is so profoundly simple that there’s no mystery as to why it’s working.
Let’s get something straight, though. I have a profound disregard for marketing.
Too often, marketing is the art of getting people to buy something they would not buy on the merits. The fact that marketing is such a massive industry suggests to me that it’s a form of socialism: Corporate America has so much money, working America is so productive, that we can afford to employ people for a task that for most of human history was optional at best and typically non-existent.
But, damn, someone on the Harris marketing team just killed it.
Mind you, they don’t seem to have invented their new approach (foreshadowing!) but I guarantee1 you there was heated debate in the Harris marketing labs over this one. And some unsung hero2 stuck to their metaphorical guns and some decision-maker overruled the play-it-safers who pooh-poohed our unsung hero.
And they came up with a winner. They’re calling Trump et al weird.
Weird.
On Saturday, Harris called what Trump and Sen. JD™ Vance (R-OH) have been saying about her “just plain weird.”
On Thursday, a campaign statement said “Trump is old and quite weird?”3
This was after Trump called her “a bum,” as if Harris were shortstop for the Brooklyn Dodgers, and after a 2021 line of Vance’s re-emerged in which he referred to “childless cat ladies” including Harris. Who has two stepchildren.
Weird!
Consensus among the Beltway heterodoxy seems to be that Gov. Tim Walz (D-MN) deserves the credit for this4. The point is, it’s been in the ether for a while.
The Taxonomy of Weird
Back in December 2023, Walz said in a Politico interview that Democrats always suffer in the polls against generic Republicans, and then do better when an actual Republican shows up. Because “These guys are weird.” And if people didn’t know it before the campaign, “Once they start running, their weirdness shows up.”
I want to pause for a moment In Defense of Weird. I am weird. I didn’t call this The Fucking News to fit in. You, dear Newsfucker, subscribe to a political news newsletter called The Fucking News. You are weird. Which is why I love you.
The Democratic Party is/was/is supposed to be the party of weird. Drag queens? Check. Performance artists? Check. Childless cat ladies? Check. Witches? Check. Readers of books who don’t just display them on the coffee table? Check.
So if Democrats are not just the party of weird, but the champions of weird, how do we square that with now attacking weird? Ah, dear Newsfucker, that’s where it gets beautiful.
There are two varieties of weird. And the taxonomy is what makes this so effective. Science tells us that there’s What’s-Your-Fucking-Problem Weird and Who-Gives-a-Shit Weird.
We know how Republicans define weird. Kamala Harris is Black, Indian, Jamaican, and had a splash of Hindu in her upbringing. That’s weird in the sense that Republicans may not be familiar with it, but also weird in the sense that Who Gives a Shit.
It’s the same kind of weird as the rest of Democratic weird helpfully inventoried four paragraphs up. The bucket that Democratic weird goes into is harmless non-conformity with valueless, arbitrary social norms. Unusual or rare.
Then there’s the Republican bucket. Being Scots-Irish isn’t weird, because it’s fairly common. Trump and Vance and their minuscule minority are weird for other reasons, other categories of reasons. Harmful reasons.
Crying wolf at women, immigrants, Black people, sex-havers, academia, ad infinitum
Policing women and their bodies
Policing LGBTQ+ people and their bodies
Policing religious belief and lack thereof
Failing to police their own mouths
David Bowie is weird. Kid Rock is weird.
The bucket that Republican weird goes into is wanting to police or control or hurt other people. Democratic weird doesn’t hurt people it broadens our notions of what we’re free to be.
Weird to them is who we choose to be. Weird to us is restricting our right to choose who we are.
One more time:
Weird to them is who we choose to be. Weird to us is restricting our right to choose who we are.
(Let’s course-correct. It’s not accurate to make parties the basis of our weirdness taxonomy. Democrats, too, have championed Republican weird. Pres. Bill Clinton did. Hell, Pres. Barack Obama did until then-Vice Pres. Biden trashed the official administration position on same-sex marriage. So even if, in this moment, it’s Democrats happily flying the right freak flag, let’s rebrand this.)
Progressive weird is uplifting and celebratory. Conservative weird is cowering and fearful.
Progressive weird is liberating. Conservative weird is restrictive. It’s literally imprisoning.
Progressive weird is glorious. Conservative weird is glory holes.
Policing the genital doings of consensual adults is weird unless you’re one of them. Failing to make room in the world for other people is weird. Failing to take other people and their feelings into account is weird.
Fearing people who haven’t hurt you is weird. Whether they’re showing up on your Ring camera or at libraries in non-normative attire.
Failing to test your synaptic blips before sharing them with an audience — while running for president — is weird. Failing to police your sexual urges is weird. Raping women in department stores is weird and fucked up and vile.
Donald Trump. Weird.
JD™ Vance. Weird.
Ron DeSantis. Weird.
Steve Bannon. Weird.
Mike Johnson. Weird.
Roger Stone. Weird.
Mike Lindell. Weird.
A majority of the Supreme Court. Weird.
Even the Trumpers who’ve succeeded in traditional fields are weird, politically and/or culturally. Peter Thiel is weird. Elon Musk invented the tunnel and the names of his twelve (12!) children include Exa Dark Sideræl Musk, Techno Mechanicus Musk, and X Æ A-12 Musk. He ended up changing X Æ A-12’s name to X AE A-XII because of The Man and His Rules (about using letters in names).
There are entire institutions now that are professionally, profitably weird, engaged full-time in the enterprise of propagating their weird. Trump didn’t research his judges all by his lonesome. Mike Lindell wasn’t born this way.
Mind you, normal people can succumb to the gravitational field of the party of the weird. Even in the upper firmaments of weird, normies show up…like meteors. Almost all of them gone while we’re still gazing at their fiery trail.
Almost every Trump exile or escapee has a dash of at least fakeable normalcy. Ivanka and Jared. Mitt. Former Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and other cabinet members from back when Trump still thought he had a corporate constituency.
Our Weird Media
I was congratulating myself for picking up on this new Democratic messaging and then had to fuck it up by Googling and saw that it’s already all the way out there.
The Guardian. Bloomberg. Business Insider.
And, really, it’s both overdue and an indictment of our political media. Why did none of our putative “insider” Beltway media call this out before The Harris Campaign’s Unsung Hero™ did? Aren’t those Beltway insiders overpaid to illuminate our political ecosphere and the players therein?
How come none of them ever put together the fact that it’s almost impossible to find a “normal” person in the leading ranks of Trump world?
And, hell, never forget that Trump-Then only became Trump-Now thanks to the corporate-appointed gatekeepers of normal (who nevertheless never lost their gatekeeper status).
In fact, violating norms is what made Trump so “fascinating” to our corporate media gatekeepers. He says what people think but don’t dare say! He doesn’t give a shit what other people think! He’s devoid of empiricism and empathy so let’s mic him up.
It’s fair to note that some MAGA may be drag queens, sex-for-pleasure havers, weird sex-for-pleasure havers, or even cat owners. But movements are defined by leader weirdness.
And right now Harris and the Dems are talking about leader weirdness, specifically the What’s-Your-Fucking-Problem genus. And the media will have to, as well. How come? Because the Democratic references beg explanation.
If Harris and her proxies keep calling Trump and his proxies weird, media will have to explain what they mean. Which will involve parroting how the Democrats explain what they mean. Or, even better, it will mean media will have to offer their own explanation.
Such as: That guy who’s economically comfortable in his low-crime neighborhood, but still angry all day and in his dreams about the economy and crime….is weird.
Now, I do think that the campaign is muddying their message somewhat by hitting Trump et al for both brands of weird. Is it weird that Trump muses over dying by electrocution vs. by shark? I guess? But that’s mostly Who-Gives-a-Shit weird.
And who hasn’t enjoyed a good Hannibal Lecter appreciation on occasion? Okay, maybe that’s just dudes, but still.
The Harris message will be most effective when it focuses on political weird, not personal.
And message-bearers will be most effective when they, themselves are not weird. Which just might explain why Harris is no longer messaging The Death of America and Democracy and Apple Pie™. Not obsessed with Trump. Not overly determinative about his every mouth noise.
After all, Trump came to power using his mouth to violate norms. At first it felt bracing and liberating. His followers felt freed of social restraints that were unfair considerate of others. The media were enthralled by Trump’s disregard for their policing.
Harris, now, has rebranded Trump’s contempt for norms in a way that shifts the focus from its supposed liberation to its oppressiveness.
With a single word, Harris is revealing the tautology inherent in Trump’s contempt for norms: It’s not normal.
TCB
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Go get ‘em, kids. You got this.
Not a guarantee.
Not an actual hero. But kinda!
Can do without the ageism, thanks. And I’m younger than Harris!
This could just be Walz’s people working the refs to get the veep nod, but who knows gives a shit.
I think Harris should make one of her primary criticisms of Trump the fact that he cannot be trusted with national secrets.
Seth Meyers has frequently noted that republicans are weird; as have I. Many of the local Magats ARE weird with that angry/broken edge to it that suggests cruelty despite their comfortable lives.