When it comes to media coverage of campaigns, there is no question that a candidate will get a lot more coverage with a well-timed zinger at their opponent than with a detailed policy analysis. Hence it should be no surprise that much attention is paid by campaigns to crafting the kind of insult that can go viral.

When it comes to campaign speeches, those of Kamala Harris and Tim Walz have some actual policy substance with some insults thrown in, such as describing creepy Donald Trump and weird JD Vance as, well, creepy and weird. Of course, creepy Trump’s main campaign strategy is as usual to hurl insults while making either vague and ambiguous policy proposals or hardline concrete ones that appeal to the racists and xenophobes in his base but are unlikely to be implemented, such as building the wall and deporting every undocumented immigrant in the country.

Weird Vance is trying to follow in creepy Trump’s footsteps, most recently saying that Harris “bent the knee to the Hamas caucus of the Democratic party” by picking Walz. He should be careful since they could respond by saying much more accurately that weird Vance and creepy Trump represent the Nazi wing of the Republican party, since white supremacists and neo-Nazis are being embraced by them.

But he is finding it hard to gain traction since he is constantly having to defend his ‘miserable childless cat ladies’ remarks as well as couch jokes. Even Republican senator Lisa Murkowski criticized the ‘childless cat ladies’ slur .

Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) hit her party’s own vice presidential nominee, Sen. JD Vance (R-Ohio), for what she called “offensive” comments about “childless cat ladies.”

“If the Republican Party is trying to improve its image with women, I don’t think that this is working,” Murkowski told POLITICO, calling Vance’s comments unfortunate, unnecessary and “offensive to many women.”

“To be so derogatory in this way is offensive to me as a woman,” she added.

Democrats are having fun with that insult. Yard signs are cropping up that say ‘Childless Cat Ladies For Harris’ and mocking Vance, like in this speech by Nevada representative Dina Titus at a Harris-Trump rally in the state, where she casually throws in a couch allusion and, by the crowd’s reaction, it seems like everyone has heard the infamous Vance-couch story.

When in comes to insults, creepy Trump, who used them so ruthlessly on his Republican rivals, seems to have lost his mojo when it comes to the Harris-Walz ticket. He has tried criticizing her laugh.

Trump criticizes Kamala’s laughter. “I call her laughing Kamala,” Trump said at a recent rally. “Have you seen her laughing? She is crazy.”

“You can tell a lot by a laugh,” he told supporters the other day. “She is nuts.”

One of Trump’s pals, Fox News host Sean Hannity, said on his show that voters “seem to detest” Harris on account of her readiness to laugh.

David Masciotra writes that this fixation on Harris’s laugh (and indeed any woman in politics who seems to enjoy life) goes back some years.

Misanthropy is now central to the American right, meaning that one of the most important, but incalculable elements of the presidential race is the weird factor. Having already exposed themselves as irredeemably weird (not to mention sexist), with Trump’s running mate Sen. JD Vance’s derision of “childless cat ladies,” the Republican Party will only get more bizarre and only appear more estranged from American culture. One of the biggest triggers for their weird outbursts is laughter from Kamala Harris.

The leaders of the Republican Party, and their propagandists in right-wing media, are miserable to the extent that they have mocked and derided— for years —Harris because she is fond of laughing. While the typical person observes Harris’ effervescent guffaw, and thinks, “She seems fun!”, the contemporary right winger, so filled with darkness, objects. “How dare she enjoy life…”
…

In an essay in which he imagined Ernest Hemingway running for president, Norman Mailer wrote, “The American people tend to vote for the candidate who gives off the impression of having experienced some pleasure in his life.” It sounds silly, but the Mailer rule is accurate at an astounding rate.
…

Kamala Harris appears to take great pleasure in life, enabling her to pass the Mailer test and meet the Rove standard. Millions and millions of Americans, especially women and young voters, would much rather sit down with Harris than Trump. A drink with Trump is, undoubtedly, a dark and dreadful affair – likely full of painful moments with the former president boasting about imaginary achievements, insulting immigrants, and looping from one macabre topic to the next. Sit JD Vance down at the table, and the average diner would probably ask the bartender for a shot of cyanide. 

In his flailing efforts at find some angle of attack that might work, creepy Trump has been trying desperately to find labels to pin on Harris. At rallies he has tried out ‘Lyin’ Kamala’ and ‘Laffin’ Kamala’ but they are not catching fire, even though he helpfully spells out the words, including the apostrophes. His weirdest attempt is to refer to Harris as ‘Kamabla’. This has left observers scratching their heads as to what it means.

At this point, readers might be asking, “What in the world does ‘Kamabla’ actually mean?” That’s certainly a common question this week, and no one seems to know the answer.

That includes Team Trump surrogates. CNN’s Kaitlan Collins asked Gov. Doug Burgum last night, “This is something I’m personally curious about. … Do you know where [‘Kamabla’] came from, and what that nickname means?” The North Dakota Republican replied, “I can’t comment on that.”
…

But the whole point of derisive nicknames is to convey an obvious criticism. When Trump called Sen. Marco Rubio “Little Marco,” the phrase was intended to diminish the Floridian’s stature. When he called Sen. Ted Cruz “Lying Ted,” Trump was trying to draw attention to the Texan’s dishonesty.

The meaning and purpose of the nicknames were self-evident. No one thought to wonder why in the world Trump was using these lines.

The fact that the former president’s own surrogates can’t explain his sudden fixation on “Kamabla” is a timely reminder of a politician who clearly no longer has his fastball.

Rex Hupke argues that creepy Trump adopted this when his ‘when did she become Black?’ attack was ridiculed and exasperated even Republicans at its sheer stupidity.

So Trump came up with “Kamabla.” Is that some combination of “Kamala” and “Black,” is it making fun of her name, is it just weird-old-man humor? Perhaps he’s using the same lizard-brain thinking that went into the name-slurs he hurled against Nikki Haley in the Republican primary, twisting her given name Nimarata into “Nimrada” and “Nimbra.”

To make it a little more offensive, he has added “Crazy” in front: Crazy Kamabla. He is definitely the kind of thinker you want in charge of America.

This Kamabla move seems to be too pathetic even for weird Vance and he says that he is not going to use it.

JD Vance laughs when asked if he knows what “Kamabla” means (Trump’s latest nickname for Harris) — he says he’s not planning on calling her that & hasn’t talked to Trump about it.

“I think the president, obviously, he loves to give people nicknames and I think that he’s going to…

— Shelby Talcott (@ShelbyTalcott) August 7, 2024

Democrats seem to have become good at turning insults back on Republicans. The Harris-Walz campaign has had mass Zoom meetings under various headers such as ‘Cat ladies for Harris’, ‘White dudes for Harris’, ‘Black women for Harris’, ‘White women for Harris’, ‘Labor for Harris’, ‘Black men for Harris’, ‘Pet lovers for Kamala’ and ‘Latino men for Harris’. Any identifiable group X that might be thought of as not totally committed to creepy Trump could get approached with ‘X for Harris’ campaign. Soon we might even see ‘Laffin’ women for Harris’, though probably not ‘Lyin’ women for Harris’.

Maybe the Trump campaign will try to borrow the idea and try something similar. How about ‘Weirdos for Trump’ and ‘Creeps for Trump’?

Walz is showing that he is much better than Vance in the traditional vice-presidential nominee role role of an attack dog, delivering his jibes in a folksy manner and leaning into his dad-jokes persona, such as in his speech in Philadelphia when Harris introduced him as her running mate.

“Donald Trump’s not fighting for you or your family,” he said. “And I gotta tell you, his running mate shares his dangerous and backward agenda for this country.”

He was especially pointed in his takedown of JD Vance.

“Like all regular people I grew up with in the heartland, JD studied at Yale, had his career funded by Silicon Valley billionaires, and then wrote a bestseller trashing that community,” he said,
adding: “I can’t wait to debate the guy – that is if he’s willing to get off the couch and show up.”

The latter is cheeky reference to a completely unsubstantiated internet joke about Vance…

Walz seemed pleased with himself. “See what I did there?”

This video that was released shows how relatable he seems, especially when compared to weird Vance.

This is Tim Walz pic.twitter.com/HnoeA6jIuP

— MeidasTouch (@MeidasTouch) August 6, 2024

At the moment, the Harris-Walz campaign seems to be ahead on the insults aspect of the race. So we can expect creepy Trump, who hates to be ridiculed, to ramp his insults up to 11 or maybe even 12.