The Weird Factor

Kamala seems to have had a great start, not least thanks to the valkyries of the Internet. There is some angst that the Democrats do not rely enough on the meat-and-potatoes issues aimed at arousing the common people, and too much on the overtly weird spots in the Republican narratives. Instead we drown in inane memes, some drawn from whole cloth. Problem is, this is what politics in the U.S. is now, and the 45th president helped bring us here. It’s endless Middle School.

I like meat and potatoes as much as anyone. My entire career was devoted to it. Thing is, people don’t listen. They can barely rouse themselves to read a paragraph. They react to fragments and overtones and replay their own prejudices and unconsidered opinions. We are a nation of pinheads with the power to destroy the human race. Having a nice summer? Enjoy it, we may not have too many more of them.

So weird works, and it’s going to keep working. Vance has a nice, full, paper and video trail for source material. His running mate is a perpetual fount of weirdness. Sharks, Hannibal Lecter, you name it. Even worse, Trump and Vance seem to be drawn into the craziest ranks of their followers’ thinking. The recent, incredible Vance bit, “My wife is not white but I love her anyway . . . “ (paraphrase that conveys the sense of the statement) is a good example.

The Rs are not all insensitive to this problem. Prolific liar Vivek Ramaswamy referenced it in a flailing effort to refocus discussion on policy. Moreover, somehow he made it into a liberal hypocrisy over diversity. It is to laugh. The Rs are not about issues, except for their own mommy and daddy issues.

My unprofessional opinion is that people yearn for calm and normalcy. Kamala, her exotic sheen notwithstanding, is a paragon of suburban normalcy. Trump promises strife and excitement, but outside his hard core, this is not what people want. Nor do they want a Handmaid’s Tale gender regime. Weird is the anti-normal.

A few of the genuine issues work for Democrats, but I would say it’s because they invoke the dilemma of the target. Sure, more people favor reproductive rights than not, but when Democrats raise this, the impact is more in the vein of “neener neener” to the Rs, as in, “You are stuck with a seriously unpopular position, sucker.”

We are looking at one hundred days of silly, so let the cat ladies march on.