The Schoolyard Taunt Election
Plus: DSA takes on the Venezuelan election, Israel kills Hamas leader, and more...
New slur just dropped: Perhaps it started with the online meme, which was semi-believable but untrue, that Sen. J.D. Vance (R–Ohio) wrote of humping a couch in his coming-of-age memoir, Hillbilly Elegy. Or perhaps it started with the most normal, almost boring politician in the world, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, who has been using this talk track for months but is only just now going viral.
But the Democrats' new strategy is to call their Republican opponents—particularly J.D. Vance, former President Donald Trump's vice-presidential pick—"weird." ("Elegant in its simplicity," said one Democratic party strategist of Walz's invention.)
"People kept talking about, look Donald Trump is going to put women's lives at risk. That's 100 percent true. Donald Trump is potentially going to end constitutional liberties that we have and voting. I do believe all those things are a real possibility, but it gives him way too much power," Walz said on CNN. "Listen to the guy. He's talking about Hannibal Lecter and shocking sharks and just whatever crazy thing pops into his mind. And I thought we just think we give him way too much credit."
Walz, a former public school teacher in Mankato, Minnesota, is aggressively earnest and plainspoken, and "actually knows how to fish" and hunt, according to an approving former senator from nearby North Dakota. He looks like he shops at Costco and doesn't know what boba tea is.
Meanwhile, Vance—the frequent target of Walz's line—has had some damning comments resurface (naturally) from a Fox News interview in 2021 in which he said the nation was run by "childless cat ladies" who are "miserable."
"How does it make any sense that we've turned our country over to people who don't really have a direct stake in it?" he asked.
Out of this soundbite and Walz's frustration, a slur was born. Here's a supercut of Democrats calling Republicans "weird" from the last week, in case you don't believe me. More here and—enjoy this Fox News chyron—here.
Does the "weird" line make any sense? Admittedly, it is a little weird for Vance and some of his fellow Republicans to express such blatant contempt for other people's life choices—particularly childless and single women, not their male counterparts who are surely also to blame (unless they're busy with the couches, in which case: ride on). But I wonder whether Democrats are taking a premature victory lap, claiming the schoolyard insult is effective, when they're not exactly the party of normal, well-adjusted people like Walz.
It's the Democrats who can claim Sam Brinton, the crossdressing, gender-fluid, lipstick-wearing Biden administration Energy Department official who kept stealing suitcases (containing clothes and makeup) from luggage conveyor belts at airports. It's the Democrats who currently have gentle-parenting Instagram lady experts using kindergarten-teacher talk to condescend to people worried about big-government regulatory policy. It's the Democrats who have spent a LOT of the last decade holding drag queen story hours at public libraries and expecting everyone to stay really calm about it, and who have promoted an awful lot of gender-doesn't-exist/gender-isn't-binary talk. It's the Democrats, in the form of teachers unions, who held protests with coffins to combat school-reopening plans during COVID-19, implying that they would die if expected to go to work (while schools stayed open in much of Scandinavia, to great effect). Don't even get me started on the fixation with white-lady tears, or the literal Hamas headbands detected on some college campuses this spring.
For right now, though, people seem fired up enough about Vance's rude comments to accept and promulgate the "weird" insult.
Sometimes it backfires, though. The X account for the Nevada Democratic Party posted this, quote-tweeting an image of the two politicians: "You can't make this up: Sam Brown and JD Vance are claiming to be champions for hardworking Nevadans—from a private jet. They're not only hypocrites…they're just plain weird."
Unfortunately for them (and for him), Sam Brown, who is running for the Republican nomination for a U.S. Senate seat in Nevada, sustained heavy facial scarring from burns that came from an improvised explosive devise explosion while he was serving in Afghanistan in 2008. It took him three years of rehab and 30 surgeries to get to where he is today, but his face doesn't look, well, normal. (Brown gracefully pivoted away from the insult.)
But therein lies the problem with this schoolyard taunt approach: It looks not only low and mean, but it denies the reality most voters (especially the double-haters) know to be true.
American politics is full of terribly weird, thoughtless, and impulsive people, reflecting exactly who we are as a nation. The Tim Walzes and the Sam Browns are actually the exceptions, not the rule. Former President Bill Clinton had sex with his intern, featuring a cigar as a sex toy. Former President George W. Bush declared "mission accomplished" when it just…wasn't. He flew over Katrina-devastated New Orleans on his way back from vacation instead of actually visiting. The Kennedys, that political dynasty that just won't go away, seem to have a hereditary philandering problem. Trump was just convicted of falsifying business records related to hush-money payments to porn star Stormy Daniels, with whom he had an affair. It's not just politicians, but the political periphery as well: January 6 saw the introduction of another wild character, the QAnon shaman, who after being sentenced for his role in the Capitol riot was granted a special organic food prison diet. Of course.
It's no wonder people want to tune out.
One last reason why the "weird" taunt might backfire: Though Vance is wrong to speak about childless people in such terms, his family…looks like a lot of American families nowadays. Three (biracial) young kids, two working parents, one of whom is a striver who came from a hardscrabble background. Just as thrice-married Trump, who pays lip service to the idea of the church but barely attends, is representative of the social values of a portion of the country, Vance appears to be representative of another chunk: Those who are upwardly mobile, who care about providing for their young families.
Scenes from New York: Inside the Shujun Wang trial. Wang stands accused of being a spy for the Chinese Communist Party. If he is convicted, he will face up to 25 years in prison.
QUICK HITS
- MSNBC contributor Molly Jong-Fast claimed on the air that Republican vice-presidential candidate J.D. Vance wants only "white children" in America, which is an odd thing to say about a man who has three biracial children with his wife, Usha.
- Israel killed Ismail Haniyeh, a top Hamas leader, as he was visiting Tehran.
- Interesting developments with Project 2025:
NEWS: Project 2025 director Paul Dans has stepped down at Heritage Foundation after pressure from Trump campaign leadership, ongoing power rift over staffing control for potential second Trump admin, per internal email. This suggests Project 2025 will likely shut down. Story TK.
— Roger Sollenberger (@SollenbergerRC) July 30, 2024
- "My cover story in the new Aug/Sept issue of Reason Magazine explores the paradox that the faster the federal debt accelerates towards a debt crisis, the less voters seem to care," writes Brian Riedl on X.
- Stunning:
The Democratic Socialists of America @dsa_intl_comm congratulated Venezuelan dictator Nicolás Maduro for stealing the election, then deleted their post pic.twitter.com/rHdA2otLUA
— Jonas Du (@jonasydu) July 30, 2024
- An artificial intelligence "friend" you wear around your neck? No thanks.
- It's time to stop the white-lady parenting influencers who are trying to get out the vote for Democrats:
There's a reason why we call it the nanny state, folks https://t.co/0fRWrr7OZF
— Liz Wolfe (@LizWolfeReason) July 30, 2024
