It makes sense. This is the sort of rhetoric that the base just loves. If you say (exaggerated for effect) "Republicans are RAPISTS!", then there's many activists who will cheer, agree that's exactly so, say it even more harshly, etc. And, to be fair, motivating the base is important in politics. But that's not likely to convince the not-already-convinced. Now, some standard punditry at this point might go on to argue about backlash, in favor of their preferred political strategy of wonk op-ed articles and academic policy papers. I won't fall on that fainting-couch. It's just that it's a dangerous cognitive error to confuse what the already-decided enjoy, with anything else. Perhaps social media makes this even more prevalent. The amount of grief Nate Silver gets, for not playing to the most partisan mobs, is quite intellectually disturbing to me (then again, he can get trashed all the way to the Bank Of Substack).
Accept that but equally I recall reading some research while writing Social Warming which showed that *overall* political TV advertising had no effect - except that when you drilled down it did have an effect *at the margin*. It’s quite possible that “weird” has no effect but to strengthen existing prejudices - though that could be useful to solidify voting numbers - but if it persuades a few at the margin they might not show up in polling numbers but will show up on polling day. Without getting everyone to fill out a sheet about precisely why they voted (or didn’t) we can’t ever be totally sure.
I don't think tribalism matters much here. It's not like Reps never used "weird" (the "childless cat ladies" meme you reference, together with countless others, was exactly that). It's that it does not stick against Dems, for the same reason a thousand variations of "you're callous and cruel" never stuck against Reps.
What matters is not tribalism is the abstract, but what image each tribe projects hic et nunc. To understand better, we might look at the reverse: why did a thousand variations of "you are elitist/callous/uncaring", usually coming from the very same people who routinely shit on the poor for giggles, was so successful?
Because Reps never pretended to care, while Dems built both their self-perception and their outreach on being the empathetic, understanding party ready to lend a hand. So any perceived failure in that regard sent them spiraling in self-doubt and was judged very harshly by voters. The cited Scott Alexander is a good example: SSC routinely featured posts along the lines of "I heard a liberal being less than fully charitable and empathetic toward people who want them dead. So much for the tolerant left!". I think the apex was his post on incels, which started off with "being dismissive to bitter lonely men makes you as callous as Reps are to the poor" as if it was the worst thing one could ever be, but obviously any post before and after insisted that being too dismissive of conservatives' views of the poor wss *also* the worst thing one could ever be.
I say this not bc of a personal pet peeve, but bc it illustrates very well how standards work: people have an idea of what they should expect from parties, and on a very instinctive, emotional level they judge them only based on expectation, not on an absolute scale.
What Waltz did with "weird" was a nuclear takedown to the level of "liberal elites": find a widely publicized core value of the opponent which you do not share in the slightest, and keep pointing out their failure to live up to that value. Yes, the average Democrat (or at least the average Dem operative) is much weirder than the average Rep, but who cares? Dems have always been weirdos. The public does not expect any different and no swing voter will begrudge this too much (if they did, they'd not be swing voters). But Reps being weird? Were they not supposed to be the bulwark of normalcy? The stern patriarchs? The squares?
Reps are having a meltdown bc... how do you even respond to that? They keep posting photos of blue-haired vegan poly liberals, and everyone is "well ok, we knew about them, but why did *you* post that cringe about cooking in tallow to avoid catching postmodernism? It does not sound that normal to me! Do you even go to church? Have you been lying to us the whole time?" and there is absolutely nothing they can do about it
I absolutely love weird as an insult choice. It’s like creepy. Once you’ve said it, it’s very hard to deny if it’s even slightly true. I think they should try chucking in a few creepies too. Vance’s weird and creepy obsession with female bodies. Trump’s creepy pussy-grabbing hands.
Creepy works well too. Someone used both weird and creepy against me in a Twitter, well, “discussion” recently and I realised that at that point you’re not going to get anywhere: they’ve completely “othered” you and don’t want to hear what you have to say.
Hate to say it Charles but you can apply “not going to get anywhere” to basically any “discussion” on Twitter. I think Megan Phelps Roper might be the only person to have her mind changed on Twitter
It's basically another iteration of the attack that Republican (or right-wing, taken to be the same) men are scary sexual predators on women, the other side of the attack that Democrats (or left-wing, taken to the be same) are sexual corrupters of children. I'm sure some political scientist or similar has made a conceptual map of this stuff (such a map could be generated with AI analysis using e.g. Twitter/X input, it might be fun to see how that works out).
It's red meat for the base, that's for sure. But it's unclear how appealing it is outside of that base. For example, despite the overwhelming liberal narrative that abortion bans are men-against-women, the male/female split is pretty close (men slightly more against abortion, but nowhere like the Rep/Dem difference).
No, I think it's qualitatively different from "X is a sexual predator" or "X corrupts children". That's a direct accusation of behaviour that can be verified or denied. But "weird" (and "creepy") are unquantifiable. Where does "eccentric" or "unusual" or "quirky" end and "weird" begin? You can't say - I don't think anyone can - and that, strangely, is its power as a label. Vance couldn't really answer it.
It's true that "weird" is vague, and that's part of its power. But also, I do agree that it contains a lot of hidden notes in it that are meant to channel the language of sexual threat. You can view it as one of those words (like creep) that gets the benefits of accusing someone of being predatory without the drawbacks of requiring proof. And it also does all of that while being a broad "othering" label like you discussed here -- even if a person manages to shake off the seedier implications, the person who accused them can just fall back on "Well, sure. Okay. But you're still weird." and the person saddled with the label still has to deal with the implication that they don't belong.
Ah, but those (predator/corrupts) are overarching themes, not the actual words used. What's the message of all the "Drag Queen Story Hour" stuff? It's about allegedly "grooming" children (and note how that specific word is being used). What fueled the popularity of the whole deliberate lie about JD Vance having sex with a couch? It's a way to say he wasn't man enough to get a woman, plus uncontrolled sexual actions. In the modern parlance, "weird" here is a "dogwhistle" - a way to imply something without explicitly saying it (of course that's a theoretically unfalsifiable claim, I know - but politics is like that, there's a lot of things which are full of implication and innuendo, so useful analysis needs to be able to consider that).
Look what Katie Lee just said - "I think they should try chucking in a few creepies too. Vance's weird and creepy obsession with female bodies. Trump's creepy pussy-grabbing hands." i.e. "sexual predators" as a broad theme.
FYI, a followup, Nate Silver has an article where he mentions how this "weird" tactic overall "didn't actually poll very well":
https://www.natesilver.net/p/kamala-harris-needs-weird-voters
It makes sense. This is the sort of rhetoric that the base just loves. If you say (exaggerated for effect) "Republicans are RAPISTS!", then there's many activists who will cheer, agree that's exactly so, say it even more harshly, etc. And, to be fair, motivating the base is important in politics. But that's not likely to convince the not-already-convinced. Now, some standard punditry at this point might go on to argue about backlash, in favor of their preferred political strategy of wonk op-ed articles and academic policy papers. I won't fall on that fainting-couch. It's just that it's a dangerous cognitive error to confuse what the already-decided enjoy, with anything else. Perhaps social media makes this even more prevalent. The amount of grief Nate Silver gets, for not playing to the most partisan mobs, is quite intellectually disturbing to me (then again, he can get trashed all the way to the Bank Of Substack).
Accept that but equally I recall reading some research while writing Social Warming which showed that *overall* political TV advertising had no effect - except that when you drilled down it did have an effect *at the margin*. It’s quite possible that “weird” has no effect but to strengthen existing prejudices - though that could be useful to solidify voting numbers - but if it persuades a few at the margin they might not show up in polling numbers but will show up on polling day. Without getting everyone to fill out a sheet about precisely why they voted (or didn’t) we can’t ever be totally sure.
Keeps Nate in work though I guess.
I don't think tribalism matters much here. It's not like Reps never used "weird" (the "childless cat ladies" meme you reference, together with countless others, was exactly that). It's that it does not stick against Dems, for the same reason a thousand variations of "you're callous and cruel" never stuck against Reps.
What matters is not tribalism is the abstract, but what image each tribe projects hic et nunc. To understand better, we might look at the reverse: why did a thousand variations of "you are elitist/callous/uncaring", usually coming from the very same people who routinely shit on the poor for giggles, was so successful?
Because Reps never pretended to care, while Dems built both their self-perception and their outreach on being the empathetic, understanding party ready to lend a hand. So any perceived failure in that regard sent them spiraling in self-doubt and was judged very harshly by voters. The cited Scott Alexander is a good example: SSC routinely featured posts along the lines of "I heard a liberal being less than fully charitable and empathetic toward people who want them dead. So much for the tolerant left!". I think the apex was his post on incels, which started off with "being dismissive to bitter lonely men makes you as callous as Reps are to the poor" as if it was the worst thing one could ever be, but obviously any post before and after insisted that being too dismissive of conservatives' views of the poor wss *also* the worst thing one could ever be.
I say this not bc of a personal pet peeve, but bc it illustrates very well how standards work: people have an idea of what they should expect from parties, and on a very instinctive, emotional level they judge them only based on expectation, not on an absolute scale.
What Waltz did with "weird" was a nuclear takedown to the level of "liberal elites": find a widely publicized core value of the opponent which you do not share in the slightest, and keep pointing out their failure to live up to that value. Yes, the average Democrat (or at least the average Dem operative) is much weirder than the average Rep, but who cares? Dems have always been weirdos. The public does not expect any different and no swing voter will begrudge this too much (if they did, they'd not be swing voters). But Reps being weird? Were they not supposed to be the bulwark of normalcy? The stern patriarchs? The squares?
Reps are having a meltdown bc... how do you even respond to that? They keep posting photos of blue-haired vegan poly liberals, and everyone is "well ok, we knew about them, but why did *you* post that cringe about cooking in tallow to avoid catching postmodernism? It does not sound that normal to me! Do you even go to church? Have you been lying to us the whole time?" and there is absolutely nothing they can do about it
I absolutely love weird as an insult choice. It’s like creepy. Once you’ve said it, it’s very hard to deny if it’s even slightly true. I think they should try chucking in a few creepies too. Vance’s weird and creepy obsession with female bodies. Trump’s creepy pussy-grabbing hands.
Creepy works well too. Someone used both weird and creepy against me in a Twitter, well, “discussion” recently and I realised that at that point you’re not going to get anywhere: they’ve completely “othered” you and don’t want to hear what you have to say.
Hate to say it Charles but you can apply “not going to get anywhere” to basically any “discussion” on Twitter. I think Megan Phelps Roper might be the only person to have her mind changed on Twitter
(Also I’m sure you don’t need me to tell you that you couldn’t be further from weird and creepy 😂)
It's basically another iteration of the attack that Republican (or right-wing, taken to be the same) men are scary sexual predators on women, the other side of the attack that Democrats (or left-wing, taken to the be same) are sexual corrupters of children. I'm sure some political scientist or similar has made a conceptual map of this stuff (such a map could be generated with AI analysis using e.g. Twitter/X input, it might be fun to see how that works out).
It's red meat for the base, that's for sure. But it's unclear how appealing it is outside of that base. For example, despite the overwhelming liberal narrative that abortion bans are men-against-women, the male/female split is pretty close (men slightly more against abortion, but nowhere like the Rep/Dem difference).
https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/fact-sheet/public-opinion-on-abortion/
No, I think it's qualitatively different from "X is a sexual predator" or "X corrupts children". That's a direct accusation of behaviour that can be verified or denied. But "weird" (and "creepy") are unquantifiable. Where does "eccentric" or "unusual" or "quirky" end and "weird" begin? You can't say - I don't think anyone can - and that, strangely, is its power as a label. Vance couldn't really answer it.
It's true that "weird" is vague, and that's part of its power. But also, I do agree that it contains a lot of hidden notes in it that are meant to channel the language of sexual threat. You can view it as one of those words (like creep) that gets the benefits of accusing someone of being predatory without the drawbacks of requiring proof. And it also does all of that while being a broad "othering" label like you discussed here -- even if a person manages to shake off the seedier implications, the person who accused them can just fall back on "Well, sure. Okay. But you're still weird." and the person saddled with the label still has to deal with the implication that they don't belong.
Ah, but those (predator/corrupts) are overarching themes, not the actual words used. What's the message of all the "Drag Queen Story Hour" stuff? It's about allegedly "grooming" children (and note how that specific word is being used). What fueled the popularity of the whole deliberate lie about JD Vance having sex with a couch? It's a way to say he wasn't man enough to get a woman, plus uncontrolled sexual actions. In the modern parlance, "weird" here is a "dogwhistle" - a way to imply something without explicitly saying it (of course that's a theoretically unfalsifiable claim, I know - but politics is like that, there's a lot of things which are full of implication and innuendo, so useful analysis needs to be able to consider that).
Look what Katie Lee just said - "I think they should try chucking in a few creepies too. Vance's weird and creepy obsession with female bodies. Trump's creepy pussy-grabbing hands." i.e. "sexual predators" as a broad theme.