It has become clear that ever since Minnesota governor Tim Walz, a potential running mate to Kamala Harris, used the term ‘weird’ to describe the Trump-Vance ticket, it has caught fire and various surrogates for the Harris campaign have started using it whenever they can, though they sometimes throw in other terms like ‘strange’ and ‘sick’ just for variety.. This seems to be an actual policy by the Harris campaign. In a speech at her Atlanta rally, Harris taunted Trump for being scared to debate her and again called him and Vance weird.

Kamala Harris just looked at the camera and spoke directly to Trump, "Well, Donald. I do hope you'll reconsider to meet me on the debate stage. Because as the saying goes, if
you got something to say, say it to my face." pic.twitter.com/kUbsubCZQm

— Sarah Reese Jones (@PoliticusSarah) July 30, 2024

This article by Jay Caspian Kang discusses the appeal of the ‘weird’ strategy.

Walz, with his talk of “weird” Republicans, has been the viral flag bearer on this messaging crusade, but that word has been repeated by a whole host of surrogates, including Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg and the senators Chris Murphy and Brian Schatz. The campaign has been lauded by the press for this rhetorical strategy. And “weird” does seem to have tapped into a great sense of relief among liberals who spent the past few months inundated by bad polls, catastrophic campaign performances by President Joe Biden, and then the weeks of uncertainty when it wasn’t clear whether he would stay in the race. “Weird” is a catchall insult that allows liberals to slap back at years of similar aspersions from the right—connected to everything from trans rights to racial justice and abortion rights—and to normalize their personal politics through the imagined average voter, who, through this verbal sleight of hand, is now on their side. When it’s deployed by Walz, even someone like me—an Asian American who works in the media and lives in liberal Berkeley, California—can feel some purchase in a mainstream that values broadly popular policies such as abortion rights, free school lunches for all kids, or, really, whatever you want to slot in there. Its vagueness is its strength—any cause can be average—which is why it has lately been beat into the ground by every liberal politician within spitting distance of a microphone.
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This line of attack is in keeping with the projected image of Harris as a tough prosecutor here to fight for all us normal people against the lies and manipulations of the weirdos and creeps. That persona seems to be working so far: in the two weeks since Biden announced he was stepping down from the race, Harris and a well-coördinated army of messengers have done an impressive job defining the contrast between Harris and the Republicans.

One sign that this is hitting home is that Republicans are now asking Democrats to stop the name-calling and talk about policy, which is rich given that for Trump and the GOP, name-calling is kind of their thing. Here for example is Vivek Ramaswamy.

This whole “they’re weird” argument from the Democrats is dumb & juvenile. This is a presidential election, not a high school prom queen contest. It’s also a tad ironic coming from the party that preaches “diversity & inclusion.” Win on policy if you can, but cut the crap please.

— Vivek Ramaswamy (@VivekGRamaswamy) July 29, 2024

Former US senator Heidi Heitkamp says that there is a reason the label has stuck.

“No one called Trump weird until Tim Walz did,” Heitkamp said. “And it resonated for a reason, because he is weird. I mean, anyone who talks about Hannibal Lecter, that’s not normal behavior. I think that there’s been people who have tried to intellectualize Donald Trump, and Tim just cut through it all and said, ‘This guy’s not normal. This is weird.’”

Trump himself tried to deflect ‘weird’ charge, saying “Nobody’s ever called me weird. I’m a lot of things, but weird I’m not.” But as Ronny Chieng of The Daily Show pointed out, responding by saying that you are not weird itself sounds kind of weird.

He has also tried to turn the weird label back at Democrats, similar to the way that when Hillary Clinton called him a puppet, he replied “You’re the puppet”. Not the sharpest of debaters.

Walz is now slamming the GOP snowflakes who are whining about the weird label.

“And I think this guy — he’s spooked. Now [the Republicans] are saying ‘They’re mean to us. These democrats are mean, because they are calling us weird.’ I think it was Hillary Clinton who said, ‘Well then stop being weird’ and we won’t call you that. That’s a point here. Come up with some good ideas.”

There will be people even on the Democratic side who will decry this kind of name-calling as juvenile and not worthy of a presidential campaign, and call for a return to substantive discussions about policy. But it need not be an either/or situation. Given how the Republican campaign has consisted largely of lies and name-calling, it seems perfectly acceptable to respond with taunts thrown in among the serious political discussions.

In fact, I think that given his past history with abusing women, the term ‘creepy’ fits Donald Trump better while ‘weird’ fits JD Vance because he is, well, weird and is on the record as saying all manner of weird things. There is something really off about these guys.

So in that spirit, I will retire (or at least suspend) referring to Trump as SSACFT (serial sex abuser and convicted felon) in favor of the more succinct ‘Creepy Trump’ and ‘Weird Vance’.