The Importance of Being Weird

I believe Trump is a threat to democracy. You, my reader, likely agree that Trump is a threat to democracy. Or to women’s bodily autonomy. Or for a mass deportation campaign. Or to build a fascitic hellscape with Project 2025. While we believe these Four Horsemen and more would follow Trump into the Oval Office, many Americans will not follow our fears that far.

Just consider the world up to the Dobbs decision for a moment. How many activists for how many years screamed how loudly that the Supreme Court is being stacked to overturn Roe? Most abortion rights supporters could not bring themselves to believe these rights were under an absolute threat. Until they were gone.

Weird lets you have good conversations with people without hitting trip wires of political extremes.

Most people look at what is politically extreme to them and then discount its possibility because it is extreme. This is rooted in an understanding of a political "generalized other” people build from a sense that most of us agree broadly on certain points and that no politician or party would risk winning a generalized majority by opposing widely-held beliefs and expectations. This creates barriers to reaching some voters when talking about how extreme Trump is. There is a point where voters will tune out when concerns go beyond how extreme they think is possible. Such a voter might not like Trump, but if the criticism sounds too alarming, too far out on the tail of the political probability bell curve, it becomes less engaging and motivating.

Herein lies the beauty of “Weird” as Tim Walz first laid out. Weird lets you have good conversations with people without hitting trip wires of political extremes. It uses non-extreme language to educate and give voters reasonable-to-them talking points to explain to one another just how extreme Trump and Vance are. “So, don’t you think it’s weird how Trump just keeps talking about the 2020 election and sharks? Isn’t it just weird how J.D. Vance is obsessed about women having babies and not cats?” Weird taps into an everyday lived experience voters understand.

People have that uncle who leers at the cousins too much. Or the conspiracy cousin who reliably upsets the Thanksgiving table. Or the guy down the street, always a bit too friendly with the neighborhood kids. Weird is an unsettling, but understandable feeling. Weirdness allows activists to convey just how unsettling Trump and Vance are without relying on the fear of democracy’s end. It is akin to satire, as it allows for conversations on important topics without the baggage of expectation or fears of confrontation.

Years ago, when the Citizens United ruling came out, my commentary was running my corporation, Murray Hill Inc., for Congress, since corporations were now people too. This campaign took the absurd notion of corporate personhood to its most absurd extreme. Our story built coverage about an otherwise drying paint topic of campaign finance. What we said using a weird context was, “isn’t it weird that the Supreme Court says a corporation can run for Congress?” The Murray Hill Inc. for Congress campaign, With just one campaign spot and many hours of work, was covered in media outlets across the United States, from the Washington Post front page to Face the Nation, and even internationally from Canada to Australia, as well as facilitating a remarkable gaff from Mitt Romney. All because people responded to just how weird it is to think of a corporation as a person.

The Trump-Vance weridness talk works the same way. Weirdness here is more of a question than a statement. A leading question perhaps, but by not raising the alarms softer voters will likely ignore, they will instead consider evidence and draw their own conclusions. “Yep, those two are weird, and not in a quirky manic pixie dreamgirl way, but in an aviod the potenial pedo down the street way. “ And these are conclusions voters will be much more likely to share with other voters over anything catastrophic like the end of democracy.

Weirdness can be a harmful notion, marginalizing people who are different but pose no threat, such as neighbors seen as disabled or spouses who put toilet paper rolls in backwards. But in the Trump-Vance case, weird is a perfect fit, and we all should press on with it from here to November.

So how weird is Vance’s couch fetish anyway?