Since President Joe Biden dropped out of the 2024 presidential election and Vice President Kamala Harris almost immediately became the presumptive Democratic nominee, Harris, her campaign, and her fellow Democrats have one word they want every American to hear over and over until the election.
Weird.
Related:
It was first noticeable in a press release issued by the Harris campaign about Donald Trump’s appearance on Fox News last week that included a list of attacks on him, including his support for Project 2025 and abortion bans: “Trump is old and quite weird?”
Your LGBTQ+ guide to Election 2024
Stay ahead of the 2024 Election with our newsletter that covers candidates, issues, and perspectives that matter.
It appeared to be a callback to an interaction with the press Harris had earlier in the month, during which she was asked what she would do if Trump followed her around the debate stage the way he did with Hillary Clinton in 2016.
“She’d turn around and say to him, ‘Why are you being so weird?’” CNN reported.
Now the word “weird” has blown up, and Harris and those who support her have been using the term repeatedly to attack Trump and his running mate, Sen. J.D. Vance (R-OH), who they describe as creepy and off-putting.
Harris’s campaign, for example, has called Republican attempts to monitor pregnancies “weird” rather than any number of other negative words like “scary,” “dystopian,” or “oppressive.”
Her campaign called Trump “weird and deranged” when he made fun of Harris’s laugh, one of his favorite attacks on her.
Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz (D), widely considered to be on the top of Harris’s list of running mate choices, has used the word “weird” in several media appearances to describe Trump, Vance, and conservatives. Here, he called them “weird” for making racist attacks on Harris and said their ideas and the “nonsense they believe” are “weird.”
“We’re not gonna stay in their frame… We’re not gonna play their game. We’re gonna call them out for the weird stuff they believe and we presented a different argument to the American public. One where everybody matters.” 🙏 make this man VP #wewantwalzpic.twitter.com/5lSC76p1cH
Conservatives started complaining about this framing. Former presidential candidate and entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy wrote on X that Democrats calling Republicans weird is “dumb & juvenile.”
“This is a presidential election, not a high school prom queen contest,” he wrote. “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.”
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.
Republicans getting mad at it only made more people say it, including Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), who responded to Ramaswamy directly, calling his party’s policy positions – including opposition to LGBTQ+ rights – weird.
“Being obsessed with repressing women is goofy,” she wrote. “Trying to watch what LGBTQ+ people do all the time is abnormal. Punishing people who don’t have biological offspring is creepy. It’s an incel platform, dude. It’s SUPER weird. And people need to know.”
Being obsessed with repressing women is goofy.
Trying to watch what LGBTQ+ people do all the time is abnormal.
Punishing people who don’t have biological offspring is creepy.
It’s an incel platform, dude. It’s SUPER weird. And people need to know. https://t.co/vgDeM9e7pU
Even Clinton joined in: “If Republican leaders don’t enjoy being called weird, creepy, and controlling, they could try not being weird, creepy, and controlling.”
If Republican leaders don’t enjoy being called weird, creepy, and controlling, they could try not being weird, creepy, and controlling.
Anti-trans extremist and Daily Caller pundit Matt Walsh also got mad at Democrats and responded with a lot of words that basically meant, “I know you are but what am I.”
Casting your opposition as cringe, lame, and weird is an effective strategy. It’s visceral. It moves people. The Dems are evil but not stupid. They’re doing this for a reason. The way to combat it is to point out that they’re a bunch of bizarre freaks. I hope Republicans have the…
In response, Media Matters’s Ari Drennen pointed out that Walsh sells plushies of himself as a baby in a diaper.
“Won’t PAC Down,” a pro-Harris PAC, put out an ad built around the idea that Republicans are weird, with a bunch of creepy guys describing Republican policy positions.
Another popular response from rightwing social media users has been to post pictures of liberals being quirky or different. For example, someone posted a picture of Ella Emhoff, Harris’s stepdaughter and a model, wearing some not-so-ordinary clothing.
“What these people simply cannot understand is that another person wearing strange clothes is not in the same category [or] ballpark of weird and threatening as another person telling *you* to wear strange clothes,” Drennen responded.
What these people simply cannot understand is that another person wearing strange clothes is not in the same category of ballpark of weird and threatening as another person telling *you* to wear strange clothes. https://t.co/guVxBMw465
Newsmax: Kamala HQ keeps calling JD Vance ‘weird.’ ‘Weird, weird, weird. Everything about Vance is weird.’ Does Vance have a problem? pic.twitter.com/iWwCvNi8WF
This led to a Fox reporter asking Vance if it was hurting his feelings.
“There’s a new insult out this week that [Harris] and her husband have been using towards you, calling you ‘weird,’” the reporter said. “Does that hurt your feelings?”
Vance laughed forcefully and said, “No, not at all, doesn’t hurt my feelings.”
Fox Reporter: There’s a new insult that her and her husband have been using, calling you weird. Does that hurt your feelings?
Harris’s campaign reposted an edited version of that video that implied that Vance was hiding his hurt feelings.
“Weird” will likely be one of the Harris campaign’s top attacks on Trump and Vance, and judging by the reaction from the right, it’s at least effective at getting a response.
Transfeminist writer Julia Serano pointed out that, on the surface, it looks like “weird” undersells “how scary MAGA proposals and rhetoric have gotten, but then she noticed that “MAGAs have suffered a complete meltdown over the word.”
“To be clear, this is a political party that routinely (and baselessly) smears their opponents as ‘groomers,’ ‘vermin,’ and ‘satanists’ — words which are far more dehumanizing and demonizing than ‘weird’ ever could be,” she wrote.
“Even though ‘weird’ is not anywhere near as pejorative as the ‘groomer’/’vermin’/’satanist’ accusations they hurl at us,” she wrote, “in a sense, the word ‘weird’ is like ‘queer’ – it’s not a pejorative if you’ve been comfortable with the fact that you fall outside the norm in that respect.”
She wrote that the “big freak-out” is a result of “the MAGA worldview being centered on them being the supposed norm. They are heavily invested in the notion that their perspective and lifestyle is the one true and righteous way that all others must follow. Calling them ‘weird’ upends this worldview.”
