Weird Vance gets Dems wired

When Democrats call right-wing Republicans "weird," they convey confidence that the American majority knows — and feels — how extreme the GOP has become

This piece was originally published at The Hot Screen.

Alongside the burst of energy, good humor, and sheer relief from the prospect of impending electoral doom, Kamala Harris’ ascension as the Democrats’ likely presidential nominee has been accompanied by a weird outbreak across the Democratic Party of. . . the word “weird.” Initially directed primarily at Trump’s VP pick, Ohio Senator J.D. Vance, the term has spread like prairie fire, embraced by politicians and partisans to describe the right-wing extremism that has gobbled up the Republican Party.

More specifically, it’s frequently been deployed against the antediluvian attitudes that so many MAGA politicos hold towards women, gays, and trans people, and more generally against what we might term “pretensions of moral superiority uttered while skating on thin or non-existent ice.” As opposed to more traditional political language — such as calling the GOP a misogynistic party dedicated to taking away women’s rights — the “weird” discourse conveys moral judgment while evoking all manner of particular, subjective emotions in the listener. You could say that it hits the listener in the heart as well as the head, provoking basic feelings of discomfort and repulsion based on one’s own particular attitudes. You don’t have to agree that, say, Vance is a “misogynist”; instead, you just have to admit to yourself that, yes, it sure is odd for someone to say that women without kids shouldn’t have a say in society’s future. This evocativeness also makes it a good way to describe in a visceral way how a politician is outside the mainstream, but without speaking so bluntly; it’s aggressive without overtly seeming so.

Not coincidentally, this linguistic offensive has paralleled Kamala Harris’ more openly confrontational opening stance toward Donald Trump, in which she has cast the former president as a predatory criminal running against a justice-dispensing, no-nonsense former D.A. A huge commonality between these two approaches — one playful, the other more traditional in its language — is an effort to cut the GOP opposition down to size. Labeling it as “weird” for a politician to advocate giving additional votes to parents with children registers a gentle contempt and dismissal, with a tacit understanding that of course voters will know automatically that this is a dumb, divisive idea that only a right-wing extremist would propose. In the same way, Harris’ labeling of Trump as a criminal strips him of his presidential prestige. Both approaches are about dominating your opponent, though one is subtler than the other. Moreover, both rely on a sort of commonsense, “we all really know what the truth of the matter is” attitude towards their opponents, so that dominance flows not just from the speaker’s will and say-so, but also from an appeal to common standards and majority opinion. In this sense, it has a touch of the anti-intellectual about it, relying on personal feelings rather than agreement with some smarty-pants description of what exactly is wrong with the particular right wing politician (Vance is “weird” about women’s privacy versus Vance is a “fascism-curious misogynist with unresolved mother issues”).

Getting the balance right between forthright talk and mockery has long been a challenge in dealing with Donald Trump. He’s a buffoonishly malevolent figure, simultaneously an unrepentant enemy of American democracy (he did, after all, attempt a coup to hold on to power), an entertainer who himself uses (often cruel) humor to bind his followers to him, and an utterer of many, many objectively stupid and offensive ideas. Do you concentrate on calling him an unparalleled threat to democracy, or on pointing out what a crazy m’er f’er he is?

As those who study authoritarianism tell us, there’s much to be gained from mocking and denying credibility to strongmen and the extremist movements they lead. In the case of Trump and the GOP, I wonder if the underlying equation has shifted over the last few years, as we are no longer talking about the prospect of Trump and the GOP doing awful things (in which case sober warnings of their dangers arguably outweigh a mocking approach that potentially downplays these very dangers). Now we’re living in a world in which their awful works lay bare before us. From the nightmares of the Trump presidency, to the red state war on women, it may be that most of us need to hear a bit less about the true dangers, and a bit more about how the politicians inflicting such harm aren’t just monstrous but absurd weirdos owed not an iota of respect. 

To some extent, proof of the effectiveness of the “weird” line of attack is discernable via the squalling and squirming evident on the right side of the political spectrum in response — not to mention the good old phenomenon of their doubling down on provocative positions in order to, yes, own the libs.

Somewhere in this mix is the “good weird” (hat tip to the late Congressman John Lewis’ concept of “good trouble”) that so quickly broke out among Democrats following Harris’ replacement of Biden as the party’s de facto presidential candidate. I am thinking in particular of the rush by many with meme-making skills to re-contextualize off-kilter remarks by Harris (at least according to right-wing critics) as in fact fun, playful, and meaningful. And so her remarks about falling out of a coconut tree (comments made by her mother that Harris has relayed to audiences) were transmuted into “good weird,” indicative of rule-breaking, the end of Democratic paralysis, and the advent of perhaps not giving quite so many fucks about bad-faith critiques. Indeed, those who came around to believing that Harris was the Democrats’ logical candidate began to speak of themselves as having been “coconut-pilled.”

I think the outbreak of these two parallel phenomena — the Democrats’ confidence in saying that multiple facets of the MAGA movement are weird and creepy, alongside the Democrats’ embrace of a heretofore unthinkable playful 2024 campaign style —should hearten the party while acting as a flashing warning sign to the GOP. When Democrats see little downside in making open appeals rooted in mass understanding of the Republican Party’s fundamental ridiculousness, and indeed appears to gain public support while doing so, we can see the possibility of the floor giving out beneath the reactionary GOP. Apart from careers in clowning and stand-up comedy, the vast majority of successful endeavors in life require other people to take you seriously. This seems doubly true in the realm of politics.

Ultimately, a mix of rhetorical strategies will be needed to rally the American majority against the reactionary MAGA movement. We need to articulate the true stakes, while also reminding ourselves, and persuadable voters, that the right is filled with absurdity as well as true menace.  This one-two punch, accompanied by a positive vision for the future that transcends the bitter backwardness offered by the GOP, may be weird — and wired — enough to work.