The GOP needs to convince voters that Donald Trump and JD Vance are regular guys, and, manifestly, they are not.

It would be strange for Democrats to attack the Republican presidential ticket for being “weird” if it weren’t true. But those men are getting weirder by the day.

Former president Donald Trump’s running mate, Sen. JD Vance (Ohio), is off to a wobbly start. A Harris 2024 campaign email sent on Friday was headlined, “JD Vance Is a Creep (Who Wants to Ban Abortion Nationwide).” The statement continued, “JD Vance is weird. Voters know it – Vance is the most unpopular VP pick in decades.”

It was bad enough when footage resurfaced of a 2021 interview in which Vance called Democrats “a bunch of childless cat ladies who are miserable at their own lives and the choices that they’ve made.” Things got worse last week when Vance offered a non-apology, blaming “people” for “focusing so much on the sarcasm and not on the substance of what I actually said.”

Uh, okay, but that doesn’t help at all. The substance — which Vance said he stands by — is asserting that adults without children do not deserve an equal say  in the nation’s affairs. Another unearthed clip of Vance showed him arguing that parents, when they vote, should be able to cast an extra ballot for each child in their family who is under voting age. He didn’t take that back, either, going only so far as to claim it was a “thought experiment” and not a firm policy position.

  • dhork@lemmy.world
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    5 months ago

    It’s quite easy to explain. Republicans have retreated into their own media bubble, where they can mold their own reality based on “alternative facts”. Their end goal is to project their reality onto the world and give it substance. In this bubble world, Donald Trump is the Alpha Male, and JD Vance is the everyman who speaks for the people.

    Outside this bubble, though, Trump is a narcissist and criminal, and JD Vance is severely out of touch. The only way to penetrate this bubble is to shove the truth through it until it pops. Sometimes, calling things as they are doesn’t get through the bubble, because it immediately puts people on the defensive about their choices. But call them weird? They might agree something a little weird is going on, and that might be just the opening to stick the truth in there.

    • cabbage@piefed.social
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      I think this is why the Republicans seem weirdly upset by this line of attack. Call them fascists, they don’t bat an eye. It’s too complicated for their base to comprehend anyway, even if the would have had a problem with it. But call them out for being weird, and suddenly their base might stop for a moment and actually think: “Yeah, writing about fucking a sofa in your memoirs is a bit odd, isn’t it?”

      • Socsa@sh.itjust.works
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        5 months ago

        Exactly. For the longest time Democrats have suffered from the “bumper sticker gap.” Liberal and leftist positions are generally more complex, nuanced and tend to require a broader intellectual background than conservative positions. This means they aren’t easily captured by sound bites, and that makes it much easier for conservatives to capture and control media narratives.

        “Republicans are weird” closes that gap, and carries a whole lot of deeper context in the form of the obvious response - “why are Republicans weird?” Suddenly there’s an inroad to engage with deeper policy conversations. And better yet, Republicans can’t engage with the topic at all without having the same conversation - “we aren’t weird because…”

      • TrickDacy@lemmy.world
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        5 months ago

        writing about fucking a sofa in your memoirs is a bit odd, isn’t it?"

        You’re aware this never happened right?

    • SkyNTP@lemmy.ml
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      Trump supporters just have small minds; it’s why they have been conned by trump to begin with. Concepts such as “liberty” and “civil rights” are too complex to explain and champion to them. Instead they understand only primitive things, like “weird” and “ugly”.

    • CharlesDarwin@lemmy.world
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      5 months ago

      One of my favorite things to watch is to see Jordan Klepper or someone from TYT doing their man on the street thing and asking some of the more radical elements some rather basic, but pointed, questions.

      These people are a product of that bubble you reference and you get to see the bubble popped in real time, although I don’t think they are fully aware of what is happening.

  • parents, when they vote, should be able to cast an extra ballot for each child in their family who is under voting age

    And so it was that Vance was elected to the newly established office of Emperor by his own sole vote, after having symbolically adopted all of America’s unborn children. When asked for comment, he was quoted as saying ”Leave your couches unwrapped at the roadside, DC, I’m coming.”

      • MermaidsGarden@lemmy.world
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        I’ve had it up to here with people saying JD Vance had sex with a couch. How many times do I have to say there’s no evidence JD Vance had sex with a couch before people stop saying JD Vance had sex with a couch? Liberals must be pretty desperate to make up that JD Vance had sex with a couch. The story that on March 17, 2011 JD Vance was banned from a Cleveland area IKEA after so thoroughly deflowering a KIVIK Sofa Chaise that it had to be removed as a biohazard due to the various fluids in and around it, causing the night manager to not only quit but need intensive therapy is beyond the pale. Who would believe this? There is sworn. court. testimony. that JD Vance has not made bare skin contact with a couch within the past 5 years. That’s a fact. Look it up. The idea that this is because JD Vance cannot contain his overwhelming sexual urges in the presence of soft furniture is reckless conjecture. Calling JD Vance a couchfucker is slander and you need to take it back.

        The Left™ will do anything to avoid talking about the real issues in this campaign, like the fact that Kamala Harris laughs sometimes.

        • Machinist@lemmy.world
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          5 months ago

          Wait. So did he actually fuck a couch for real? Pretty sure the other one fucked/molested his daughter. I wouldn’t be surprised, I’m just genuinely curious, keep seeing this and am not sure where it comes from.

    • lagomorphlecture@lemm.ee
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      5 months ago

      In the Republic of JD, everyone votes for President Daddy.

      Here are some fun facts about President Daddy:

      As a baby, he never cried and his poop didn’t stink.

      President Daddy took 2 wives to help repopulate the Democrat wasteland.

      President Daddy made January 9th a holiday to commemorate the purchase anniversary of his favorite couch.

    • NatakuNox@lemmy.world
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      5 months ago

      Ya and wealthy white families totally won’t steal/buy poor and minority children to increase their voting power…

  • mynamesnotrick@lemmy.zip
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    Trump is really weird. Here's his shark story from June that he was regularly telling.
    “I say, ‘What would happen if the boat sank from its weight, and you’re in the boat, and you have this tremendously powerful battery, and the battery’s now underwater, and there’s a shark that’s approximately 10 yards over there?’
    “By the way, a lot of shark attacks lately, do you notice that? Lot of sharks. I watched some guys justifying it today: ‘Well they weren’t really that angry, they bit off the young lady’s leg because of the fact that they were not hungry but they misunderstood who she was.’ These people are crazy. He said, ‘There’s no problem with sharks, they just didn’t really understand a young woman swimming.’ No, really got decimated, and other people, too, a lot of shark attacks.
    “So I said, ‘There’s a shark 10 yards away from the boat, 10 yards, or here. Do I get electrocuted if the boat is sinking, water goes over the battery, the boat is sinking? Do I stay on top of the boat and get electrocuted, or do I jump over by the shark and not get electrocuted?’ Because I will tell you, he didn’t know the answer.
    “He said, ‘You know, nobody’s ever asked me that question.’ I said, ‘I think it’s a good question. I think there’s a lot of electric current coming through that water.’ But you know what I’d do if there was a shark or you get electrocuted? I’ll take electrocution every single time. I’m not getting near the shark. So we’re going to end that, we’re going to end it for boats, we’re going to end it for trucks.”
    

    source

    • Maggoty@lemmy.world
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      At this point the Navy is just going to tell him they took the batteries off the ships and do nothing. (Yes this is related to his tour of the new aircraft carrier where he didn’t understand the technology so he tried to order the Navy to rip it out and replace it with the old tech. Which would have effectively scrapped the 10 Billion dollar ship.)

      • ChickenLadyLovesLife@lemmy.world
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        he didn’t understand the technology so he tried to order the Navy to rip it out and replace it with the old tech

        “But sir … the masts would prevent planes from taking off and landing.”

    • CharlesDarwin@lemmy.world
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      5 months ago

      It sure would be nice to have a non-partisan, objective test for sufficient brain function and if someone fails, they are ineligible for any office.

      • Angry_Autist (he/him)@lemmy.world
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        There can be no non-partisan test, republicunts pride themselves on denying reality.

        The right literally consistently scores lower on every aptitude test they are scored on, so they of course can always claim bias.

    • What in the fuck is he trying to say? Is this a metaphor? Is he trying to sell rubber dinghies to the navy? Did a shark and/or boat outbid him at the annual McDonald’s auction and this is a veiled threat?

  • dumples@midwest.social
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    5 months ago

    Donald Trump is a weird old man and shouldn’t be running for president. He should drop out

    • Zanathos@lemmy.world
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      He’s too narcissistic to drop out and admit defeat. He agreed to the debate of Biden knowing he’d win, now he’s dancing around trying not to reach the podium again to debate Harris because he knows he’ll lose. He only plays to win, and he’s in such deep shit legally that he has to stay in the running. His backs against a wall now.

    • TrueStoryBob@lemmy.world
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      Look, I run my mouth all the time… but I’m also not running for Vice President. I am a white dude, so there is a non zero chance that the Harris team might reach out to me at some point before the convention, but I doubt it.

    • Johnmannesca@lemmy.world
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      Is this just so he can talk more rancid shit about “wellfare queens”? It seems like it would only hurt his stance since he hates the poors.

  • RagingRobot@lemmy.world
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    So let’s just imagine they pass a law where people get an extra vote for their kid, which parent gets the vote? Or does each parent get an extra? Because that wouldn’t make sense. Not that any of it did in the first place

    • Flying_Hellfish@lemmy.world
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      No no, only the husband will get to cast the vote for his children. No accounting for non-traditional relationships, because JD doesn’t count them.

      • LouNeko@lemmy.world
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        Man gets the vote for election, woman gets the kid after divorce. Sound only fair to me /s.

  • TimeSquirrel@kbin.melroy.org
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    There’s no way anybody’s ear, especially at that age, healed that fucking fast without any scab or scar. It takes me two weeks just to get rid of a paper cut.

    • Varyk@sh.itjust.works
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      So you don’t think the spray tan teeth whitening scalp reduction diaper baby healed naturally?

    • TrickDacy@lemmy.world
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      Where do you get the idea it did? All I’ve seen is an incredibly low res picture that doesn’t prove anything

      Edit: the downvote tells me someone isn’t open to being wrong, which is a sad existence

  • LouNeko@lemmy.world
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    America is raised on celebrities and symbolism. They have the biggest media companies in the world. Idolizing singular individuals, putting them on a pedestal is what they do. It always has to be black or white, good vs evil, like in the movies. They want the good guy to win and get the girl. The art of american politics is to convince more than 50% of people that you’re the good guy and the other candidate is the bad guy.

    That’s why the rest of he world is looking at the US election as entertainment. A circus and freak show in one.

    It has the narrative of a Hollywood movie with real life consequences for people.

  • thedeadwalking4242@lemmy.world
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    5 months ago

    Does anyone else feel like the weird argument falls short. I don’t feel like any of the people I know who like trump mind being called weird. They are some of the weirdest people I know anyway. I think they are used to it

    • Socsa@sh.itjust.works
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      It’s good because it’s purely subjective. The entire problem thus far has been that factional arguments, like “Trump is an authoritarian” and “Trump tried to start an insurrection” end up getting cast as subjective “alternative facts” anyway. The “weird” thing gets straight to the point and kind of short circuits the entire alternative facts thing. It’s also “mild” enough that it doesn immediately elicit a defensive response like calling someone a fascist does.

      This all adds up to creating a crack in the rhetorical wall. “Yeah, Trump is kind of weird isn’t he?” Instead of digging in, it actually lowers the guard a bit, and helps breaks people out of the echo chamber.

    • Dasus@lemmy.world
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      They try not to show that they care.

      But they definitely do. Trump has basically tantrums if people say he has “weirdly small hands”

    • Asifall@lemmy.world
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      Maybe, but nobody cares when you call them facists so I’m not sure what the best move is.

      I do actually think the weirdness argument does probably play to the suburban traditional values types who want to believe they’re the normal ones and everyone else is going crazy.

      • AutistoMephisto@lemmy.world
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        Exactly. Conservatives hold as their highest values, conformity, compliance, cohesion, authority, sanctity, and tradition. They love adhering to their established norms and standards rather than challenging them. They defer to those whom they view to be in a position of authority. They have lines they do not want crossed, things they hold sacred. To be called “weird” is to be called as existing outside the norm.

        • kmaismith@lemm.ee
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          It also works because they are in the minority, it counters the outsized voice brought by all the political bs. (Side note: isn’t it so weird we use an electoral college, all the other democracies have come up with more effective ways to make sure all voices are represented in government)

          • AutistoMephisto@lemmy.world
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            We literally created the Electoral College as DEI for slave states. It went hand-in-hand with the infamous “3/5ths Compromise” that allowed slavers to cast ballots in the names of their slaves, so slavers could cast as many votes as they had slaves.

    • MojoMcJojo@lemmy.world
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      Yes, but the gravity of the full extent of theit danger to the country hasn’t been relatable enough for the general public. Now call them weird and suddenly people can relate. Democrats have been trying to talk about the forest, when all they needed to do was plant the seed. “Yeah you know what, what he said is weird, what’s up with that…and now that you mention it, what else have they been up to”

    • na_th_an@lemmy.world
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      They are some of the weirdest people, but they don’t realize it. That’s why it’s effective. They think they’re the normal true real America, and everyone else is weird.