Vice President Harris’ campaign has described her opponent as a “crazy guy.”
The campaign’s strategy has been to apply the label to everything from former President Trump’s rally comments about Hannibal Lecter to past comments made by Sen. J.D. Vance (R-Ohio) about childfree women.
“I think some of you have noticed that Donald Trump has told some pretty outrageous lies about my record. Some of the things he and his running mate have said are just bizarre. I mean, you put that in a box,” Harris said of Trump at a fundraiser in Massachusetts on Saturday.
The Harris campaign said Sunday that Sen. Vance “had a strange night on Fox News” after being asked by Trey Gowdy about his criticism of childfree Americans. The senator said Democrats had taken his comments out of context, but that “the left is incredibly and obviously anti-children and anti-families.”
One former party official said the phrase sums up how the GOP is currently behaving.
“I think it represents something the Democratic Party has had a hard time expressing, which is that these guys who want to get in your office want to get in your bedroom and make every decision in your life. It’s weird. I don’t know how to describe it, but I think ‘weird’ is the best word. I think it’s very powerful and effective,” said Clayton Cox, former finance director for the Democratic National Committee.
Vance responded to Harris’ “bizarre” insult by saying he wasn’t hurt and was “honored.”
At a rally in North Carolina last week, Minnesota Governor Tim Walz (Democrat), a potential running mate for Harris, responded to Trump. Talk about serial killers “Say it with me, it’s weird,” one character from the film “Silence of the Lambs” commented on social media.
“Trump is old and has changed a lot,” the Harris campaign said in a campaign email on Thursday. And on Friday, the campaign sent out an email calling Vance “creepy” and highlighting his past comments on abortion, saying, “J.D. Vance has changed.”
“I think that’s true because he’s a weirdo,” said David Thomas, a Democratic strategist and former aide to then-Vice President Al Gore.
“A quick Google search will bring up all the very strange things J.D. Vance has said over the last few years. I don’t know who has vetted this. Republicans seemed to regret it almost immediately, but that’s because he has a habit of making very strange statements. And that’s going to be a problem for them for the rest of the summer and into the fall,” he added.
The strategy continued into the second week of the campaign, with the Democratic National Committee releasing a memo on Monday calling Vance’s ideology on family “bizarre and extreme” and arguing that his “opponent is an unrealistic nutcase.”
Harris faces the challenge of expanding her base beyond the states where President Biden won the White House in 2020. Polls show she is trailing Trump in most battleground states, but the margin is smaller than in polls before Biden ended his campaign. Harris declared she would seek the Democratic nomination after Biden gave up reelection and secured the number of delegates needed to clinch the nomination, which is expected to be formalized as early as Thursday in a virtual roll call vote.
According to a Decision Desk HQ/The Hill poll compiled about a week after her candidacy, Harris’ approval rating was just under 46%, below Trump’s roughly 48%.
The Harris campaign is eager to rally new support before Labor Day, and Cox argued the “strange” strategy could draw in voters who have not yet paid attention.
“I think this is definitely going to reach people who aren’t paying attention or can’t pinpoint why they feel this is different. So I think this is going to serve people who aren’t very politically involved and don’t pay as much attention,” said Cox, vice president at McGuireWoods Consulting.
Democrats also believe the Harris campaign proved it can adapt quickly and nimbly last week, and some argue that if this “weird” strategy doesn’t resonate with voters, they could try something new.
“At this point, anything tied to the Harris campaign feels more organic than strategic. Could it backfire? Yes, and they could move on to something else. This is moving fast,” said Ivan Zapien, a former senior Democratic National Committee official.
Last week, Ms. Harris quickly adopted a split-screen strategy, calling Mr. Trump a convicted felon and pointing to her own role as a former prosecutor to describe herself and her opponent. She also tried to portray Mr. Trump as “scared” for not attending a scheduled debate in September and accused him of backing down.
The campaign has focused on highlighting comments by Trump and Vance that it deems offensive, a strategy it adopted when Biden was a leading candidate. As part of that, Democrats have pounced on recently resurfaced comments in which Vance warned that the country is run by “childless, cat-loving women,” calling them downright “bizarre.”
“I think these comments speak for themselves. There’s no need to manipulate or falsify the content if it’s this bizarre,” Thomas said. “He’s offended just about everyone in the country in some way and he has to take responsibility for what he said.”
