James Johnson is co-founder of JL Partners. He was the Senior Opinion Research and Strategy Adviser to Theresa May as Prime Minister, 2016-2019.
In the auditions to be Kamala Harris’ running mate, Governor Tim Walz delivered what the press determined to be a killer barb. He called Donald Trump and JD Vance “weird”.
It certainly helped Walz get the job.
It also landed: in a poll on JD Vance in August, we found one of the words most associated with him was just that: “weird”. There are three types of weirdness that voters have an aversion to – and that Walz struck at.
First, the feeling that Trump would be a divisive, dramatic nightmare. Electing him would usher in another four years of rolling over in the morning, checking one’s phone, and being greeted by a nerve-wracking wave of presidential social media posts and chaos. That’s not normal governance: it’s weird, and it’s one of the reasons voters chose Joe Biden in 2020.
They wanted a break from it all.
The second is simpler, and how we use the word day to day.
Don’t do stuff that’s downright odd. In this category might sit Trump talking about a celebrity’s penis size or suggesting we should inject bleach to stave off Covid. Or perhaps his inauguration speech in 2017 is a good example. After Trump sat down, former president George Bush turned to Michelle Obama and said: “that was some weird shit”.
Third, and most damaging, is that sense that someone is just a bit out of sync with the pulse of America. This plays most strongly on the issue of abortion. The Harris-Walz campaign proclaim in their ads that these bro types in the Republican Party want to take away women’s rights. More than that (they say), Trump and Vance want to track women’s abortions. Or ban IVF. It doesn’t sit right with the spirit of America. The Republicans just feel a little off.
But the weird barometer has flipped.
In the last couple of weeks, it is the Democrats – and their press outriders – that are coming off as the weird ones.
In the past few days, we have had the following:
- Democratic strategist James Carville said Trump was set to run a “fascist” rally, “mimicking” Nazis by holding a political rally in Madison Square Garden (a stadium and the home of a Democrat convention one year)
- MSNBC commentators proudly breaking the story to their viewers that Trump does not actually work at McDonald’s
- Tim Walz suggesting Trump’s visit to McDonald’s was disrespectful to workers
- Newsweek saying, apparently genuinely, that an image of Trump on the American football field with a six pack was “likely” AI-generated
- Harris cajoling Trump as “not a serious person” after his McDonald’s trip
- Representative Barbara Lee of California stating that the restaurant visit suggests Trump “is not well”
To the average American, the McDonald’s stunt was amazing at best, mildly amusing at worst. Voters might be bored of Trump’s rallies, but they do not view them as Nazi gatherings. People think an AI image of Trump as a football player is a funny meme, not a malicious act of disinformation.
Harris and Walz are coming across like they have lost their sense of fun. They are acting like the school bore. The kid who tells on everyone else. The kid that reminds the teacher there’s homework due. The weird kid.
While America is laughing, the Democrats look a little out of sync.
That opens the road for people to consider other incongruous aspects of the Democrat platform too.
Last week, Harris said she would review the issue of federal reparation payments over slavery. Recently, Harris launched a bizarre ad telling voters they could be manly by backing her. In a new pledge card to win over black men, Harris touted forgivable loans for cannabis businesses. The Biden administration has brought in Title IX, which guarantees that public school students can use school bathrooms that align with their gender identity.
To most voters, all this stuff is just a little weird.
Trump cannot escape from the first definition of weirdness: the charge that he would govern in a chaotic, divisive way. This is why his debate performance went down so badly with voters and gave Harris a bump. Voters – independents in particular – do not want the drama back, the “whining baby” as one voter told me last week. At the weekend, Trump told a crowd that Harris was a “shit vice president”.
It’s crude, rude, and does not sit well with middle America.
But the last undecided voters in this election have short memories: many have told me they will vote depending on which issue is at the forefront of their mind on the day.
The more Trump friendlily hands out French fries, and the less he creates drama, the more these voters will remember his economic record of his first term rather than the weirdness that came with it.
Our polling shows that voters’ principal memory of the Trump campaign is more likely to be a ‘better economic times’ than ‘January 6th’ or ‘division and drama’. Democrats aren’t helping themselves: last night Joe Biden – not Donald Trump – called for his political opponent to be “locked up”.
I wrote a dispatch from Erie, Pennsylvania back in August, after speaking to undecided voters there. Conrad, a 32-year-old insurance salesman, summed it up. ‘Harris just has to be, for lack of a better word, normal. And then I think she wins.’
As we reach the closing days of this campaign, the Democrats have weakened their claim to that title.
