Weird

Why it matters, and how Republicans got that way.

The first thing to say about the new Democratic campaign theme that Donald Trump, J.D. Vance, and the Republican party in general are “weird” is we don’t actually know much about how effective it is. Or to be more precise:

• We know it’s escaped from campaign rhetoric into the larger culture;

• We have plenty of evidence Democrats, or at least a lot of Democrats, especially the most politically active ones, really love it;

• We have no real idea how it sounds to people who pay less attention to politics or what effect if any it will have on their turnout and vote choice in November.

Of course, the last of these points is true of almost all political sloganeering. We don’t really know how or if “Hope” and “Change” as buzzwords and as broader concepts mattered in 2008, for example. We know that Barack Obama won, but it’s almost certain that his victory by a wide margin had a lot more to do with an electorate fed up with the party in the White House during an unpopular war and a devastating recession than with anything about either campaign. And of course campaign-and-candidate factors include not just slogans but also everything from Obama’s speaking skills to Sarah Palin’s disastrous VP campaign — really dozens of things that all may have had minor effects (in either direction!) on the election outcome.

Campaign themes may well have lots of important effects on the subsequent presidency, on the future of the political party, and on the nation at large – whether they change votes or not. They count among the promises that candidates run on, and that’s an important part of how representation, and therefore democracy, actually works. As my colleague Julia will correctly tell everyone, never assume something can only be important if it changes election outcomes.

And even within campaigns, there are targets beyond direct effects on turnout and vote choice. In this case, the Kamala Harris campaign may be eager to give her strongest supporters something they’ll like right away, which might contribute to keeping the initial surge of energy at the beginning of her campaign going – which can have very tangible effects in terms of volunteer hours and fundraising.¹ What’s more, to the extent that the neutral media buys the idea that Trump et al. are “weird” it may pay off in how they cover things down the line.

As far as the substance: “Weird” should work, because it’s basically true! Dave Karpf has a good summary of some of the particulars, such as their opposition to “Taylor Swift and the NFL and Bud Light,” but it’s only a small subset of all the bizarre things that politicians and other high-visibility Republicans regularly talk about, Such as, for example, Vance’s criticism of Simone Biles.

What’s important to understand about this is it’s not random, and it’s not really personal about either Trump or Vance. Both of them are reacting to the incentives created by the current Republican Party, which is dominated by its party-aligned media. For Fox News and its smaller competitors, and for the even smaller radio shows and web pages, the way to make money is to find a relatively tiny audience and keep them tuning in. There’s no downside to being weird; normal people who pay limited attention to politics aren’t really in the potential audience anyway.

Yes, that could happen on the Democratic side as well. It doesn’t — so far — because MSNBC and other liberal media outlets simply don’t have the clout within the party that Fox News and the others have within the GOP. Instead, the clout remains with those who have strong electoral incentives: Politicians, interest groups, campaign and policy professionals, donors and activists. They may believe some goofy stuff, but they want to win elections, so they will tend to stick to things that they think will appeal to majorities. So when liberal outlets get weird, Democratic politicians stop appearing on them, making those sites politically irrelevant if they don’t change course. On the Republican side, politicians compete to be the most outlandish, and therefore to get those invites.²

And it builds on itself. As serious legislators and policy-makers are driven out of the Republican Party, more and more of those who remain have getting on GOP-aligned media as the only worthwhile goal in their political careers, and will say what it takes to get there. Or they are basically just part of the audience, and actually believe a lot of nonsense. Or both. All of which makes those media outlets even more important within the party.

So yeah: The Republican Party is weird, and there’s not much that a single campaign, even a presidential campaign, can do about it. Trump and Vance got where they are by being this way; politicians keep their promises, and that includes an implicit promise to be mainly concerned with the fringiest portion of the Fox News audience. There may be some way in the longer term to break the cycle, but it’s not going to happen with Donald Trump around. No matter how many votes it costs them.

Weird.

1. Keeping the staff and volunteers enthusiastic may also pay off in reducing internal conflict when inevitable trouble happens. That’s potentially valuable!

2. Yes, Democrats do have ideological outliers, including some who are willing to risk electoral punishment for taking extreme position, but they don’t dominate the party. The potentially weird — think Tulsi Gabbard and Robert F. Kennedy Jr. — wind up leaving the party entirely or, like former Florida Member of the House Alan Grayson, get ostracized.