By AP
Photos: YouTube Screenshots\Wikimedia Commons
Vice President Kamala Harris and her Democratic allies are emphasizing a new line of criticism against Republicans — branding Donald Trump and his running mate, Ohio Sen. JD Vance, as “weird.” The message appears to have given Democrats a narrative advantage that it rarely had when President Joe Biden was still running for reelection. Read more.
Why this matters:
Democrats are applying the label with gusto in interviews and online, notably to Vance’s comments on abortion and his previous suggestion that political leaders who didn’t have biological children “don’t really have a direct stake” in the country.
David Karpf, a strategic communication professor at George Washington University, said labeling Republican comments as “weird” is the sort of concise take that resonates quickly with Harris supporters. Plus, he notes, it frustrates opponents, leading them to further amplify it through off-balance responses. “So far, at least, Trump-Vance has been incapable of finding an effective response,” Karpf said.
Trump’s campaign, which so often shapes political discussions with the former president’s pronouncements, has spent days trying to flip the script by highlighting things about Democrats it says are weird. More broadly, some of Trump’s allies have angled to turn the conversation back to Harris and what they portray as her failed policy ideas.
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