Column: With a single word — 'weird' — Democrats may have found Republicans' kryptonite (2024)

Democrats may have finally found their magical talisman: One word (with apologies to J.R.R. Tolkien) to rule them all, one word to find them, one word to bring them all and in the darkness bind them.

And that word is “weird.”

Last week, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz went viral with his observation that former president and current GOP nominee Donald Trump and his running mate J.D. Vance are “just weird.” After Trump wildly attacked Vice President Kamala Harris, the leading Democratic candidate, on “Fox and Friends,” the Harris campaign responded with a scathing press release titled “Statement on a 78-Year-Old Criminal’s Fox News Appearance” that included in its bullet-point takeaways: “Trump is old and quite weird?”

Since then the word has become a byword among Harris supporters, used to describe everything from Trump’s continued, and quite baffling, non sequiturs about “the late, great Dr. Hannibal Lecter” to Vance’s openly misogynistic charges that the Democratic Party is run by “childless cat ladies” and that people who do not have biological children are sociopaths.

“Weird” is the new “weak” — and it is driving Republican leaders crazy.

That is telling in itself. Democrats also have used “felon,” “rapist,” “Nazi,” “liar” and “fascist” to describe Trump, which most Republican leaders have simply taken in stride (felon being, of course, irrefutably true).

But “weird”? That conservative politicians and pundits think is childish and mean.

Which is pretty weird, when you think about it. Trump is nothing if not childish and mean, a man who prides himself on personally mocking anyone he perceives to oppose him. Even as former GOP presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy wrote on X, “This whole ‘they’re weird’ argument from the Democrats is dumb & juvenile,” Trump was workshopping a derogatory nickname for Harris, as he has for his other rivals over the years. (Crazy and/or Laughing Kamala appear to be front-runners, along with various mispronunciations of her name.)

So why are “weird” and its increasingly popular cousin “creepy” freaking Republicans out in a way that “fascist” or “authoritarian” never did?

Power. “Weird” does not convey a sense of power. Indeed, in its current usage, it is a dismissive term, a labeling of bizarre behavior or beliefs that implies not a threat but a diminishment.

“Weird” is not a shout of outrage or fear but a shrug of derision and disdain. “Stop being weird” is what one says when another’s actions and attitudes are so ridiculous that it honestly isn’t worth explaining why.

It is embraced, like “freak” or “geek,” by those — most often associated with the left — who refuse to be cowed by traditional hierarchies or schoolyard bullies. But it is not a term of self-identification historically embraced by those who seek power, especially of the authoritarian variety.

As Trump and many of his supporters have made clear, they admire authoritarians, including Vladimir Putin and North Korea’s Kim Jong Un — “I think he misses me,” Trump said at the Republican National Convention — as figures of strength. Trump has always campaigned on fear: of undocumented immigrants, “demolished” suburbs, restrictive gun laws, transgender children.

There is power in fear. In ridicule, not so much.

“Weird” takes fear out of the equation. As Walz said recently, “The fascists depend on fear … but we’re not afraid of weird people. We’re a little creeped out, but we’re not afraid.”

The Democrats’ use of “weird” turns the Republicans’ self-image on its head. For years, the GOP has positioned itself as the party of “real Americans,” fighting to reestablish “real” American values. “Weird” points out how many of their positions, including but not limited to their antiabortion stance and historic refusal to support broader access to health- and childcare, put them at odds with a majority of Americans.

Vance’s openly crackpot assertion that people who do not procreate are somehow less sane, and less American, than people who do is most definitely weird. As is Project 2025’s demand that a two-person, male-led, heterosexual, cisgender nuclear family should be the American standard. Republican leaders’ obsession with the “dangers” of drag queens, transgender people and the LGBTQ community in general makes them the outliers in a society that, particularly among its younger members, is generally supportive and accepting.

Republicans’ instant move to call Harris a low-IQ, “DEI” (diversity, equity and inclusion) candidate has even met with resistance from within the right-wing media bubble. Fox’s Neil Cavuto recently pushed back against Sen. John Kennedy (R-La.) over his personally insulting remarks about Harris, pointing out that such comments could hurt the Trump campaign in November. Kennedy, with whom this clearly did not compute, continued to double down.

Which is definitely — say it with me now — “weird.”

“Weird” makes it clear that Trump and his surrogates are the ones outside the norm, that their rhetoric and proposed policies deviate so far from what many Americans want from their leaders as to appear absurd. Trump, who is now regularly deriding Harris’ laugh, is not a fan of laughter. As many have now pointed out, he rarely laughs, and never at himself.

“Weird” doesn’t just refute Trump’s MAGA stance, it also, and this is important, defuses it. Drains both the messengers and their messages of power. It’s weird that Trump doesn’t think America is a great nation. It’s weird that he wants to be president of a democracy when he doesn’t believe the democratic process works.

For the Democratic Party, it is also a powerful reclamation. Though the registered (if not always voting) majority, Democrats are still too often dogged by charges of being “radical” or “fringe.” Now they appear to be flipping the narrative.

Harris is the “normal” American. It’s Trump and Vance who are weird.