After nearly a decade of being forced to take Trump seriously, Democrats increasingly call BS on the whole charade
Sure, Donald Trump is a threat to democracy — a would-be dictator on day one who has called for terminating the U.S. Constitution so he can hold onto power even after losing a free and fair election. But while draped in the rhetoric of populism, Trump and his MAGA movement are not actually popular; the man himself has never won more votes than the person he ran against, a majority of Americans twice rejecting him and his off-putting cult of personality. That he was ever president is more or less because a few thousand swing voters in Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania thought it would be fun.
President Joe Biden won in 2020 largely by promising to a return to normalcy and baseline competency. In 2024, Democrats are making a similar argument but more forcibly: They’re pointing, laughing and dismissing Trump and his circus as a total freak show to which we can’t return.
There are subtleties of language that depend on context. I think most people understand that this line of attack refers to malignant weirdness as opposed to quirky or outside-the-mainstream weirdness.
For example, the GOP’s obsession with micromanaging women’s bodies is fucking weird. From context, you can probably see that I mean it is sinister, strange, and gross.
Then call him malignant. Weird is a word that has mostly positive connotations and it sounds like she’s complimenting him when quotes are taken out of context and put into a headline.
It’s also a word stupid people are going to have to look up, and it’s easily disregarded as just being against them because they’re republicans (how they feel about Democrats) and not because their beliefs are fucking weird and creepy.
I like the weird messaging as a weird dude, because it’s pretty clear it’s being used because it makes them feel like they’re not in the in-group anymore. You can see by how badly they react how effective the message is, and changing messaging just when something starts working just makes you look incompetent or like you’re trying to sabotage your own message. The Democrats already have enough of that kind of baggage, they don’t need to shoot themselves in the foot right now…
“Weird” is incredibly effective in this context because thinking of themselves as “Normal” is really, really important to right wingers, and especially to the MAGA cult. Just look at how often they use terms like “silent majority”. Being the norm, the baseline, the average, that’s essential to their understanding of who they are. Meanwhile the liberals and leftists and Democrats are the kookie weirdo freaks who want to destroy their decent, simple, God fearing way of life. That normality is exactly what they think conservatives are conserving. So the idea that their “Normal” is a myth undercuts their entire way of thinking.
Interesting perspective. My exposure to MAGA folks has tended to be from edgelords who take pride that they aren’t “normies” and that they are different from the mass of “sheeple”.
I suppose it depends on whether you associate MAGA with the alt-right or with traditional conservatives. Both are important voting blocks for trump. I don’t know many traditional conservatives that haven’t jumped on the centrist neoliberal bandwagon.
I associate a desire for “normalcy” and a rejection of those who have “weird” opinions with the aging neoliberals in my life. They often use attacks on the “weird” to resist progressive and inclusive actions that don’t fit within their neoliberal boomer mindset. The non-centrists reject normality and embrace weird and unusual ways of approaching the problems in our country, at least in my social exposure. It’s one of the ways that I’ve seen both extremes differ from the center. The difference between the left and right extremes are just the brand and direction of deviation from the crumbling and untenable centrist positions. One side celebrates weirdness and diversity, the other celebrates what they think makes them superior to normal, and therefore worthy of surviving the genocide they advocate for.
