Tim Walz changed the 2024 election with a single viral diss—and earned a VP nod because of it

Kamala Harris’ vice presidential pick, Minnesota Governor Tim Walz, is a man of many strengths. As a former senior Army officer, educator, and elected official, his political resume screams public service. But perhaps his greatest contribution to American civic life boils down to a single viral insult.

Just days after President Joe Biden announced that he was withdrawing from the 2024 presidential election and endorsing Vice President Kamala Harris in his stead, Walz appeared on MSNBC’s Morning Joe to offer a brutally effective message: Former President Donald Trump and his vice presidential pick, Ohio Senator JD Vance, are “just weird.”

“I think this is going back to the bread-and-butter: getting away from this division,” Walz said when asked what Democrats can do to make political inroads in deep-red rural areas. “We do not like what has happened, when you can’t even go to Thanksgiving dinner with your uncle because you end up in some weird fight that is unnecessary … It’s true: These guys are just weird.”

Walz’s comments quickly went viral across social media, prompting him to speculate on CNN’s State of the Union days later as to why his insult resonated more broadly than the typical talking points (most of which revolve around Trump posting an existential threat to democracy). “Listen to the guy,” Walz said. “He’s talking about Hannibal Lecter and shocking sharks and whatever crazy thing pops into his mind, and we just give him way too much credit. When you ratchet down some of the scariness and just name it what it is … I gotta tell ya, my observation on this is: have you ever seen the guy laugh? It seems very weird to me that an adult can go through six-and-a-half years of being in the public eye, [and] if he has laughed, it’s at someone, not with someone. That is weird behavior. I don’t think you call it anything else.”

Walz’s broadside was quickly embraced not only by digitally-engaged voters, but by rank-and-file Democrats as well. Speaking at her first official fundraiser as presumptive presidential nominee in late July, Harris herself embraced the term, declaring that: “You may have noticed Donald Trump has been resorting to some wild lies about my record and some of what he and his running mate are saying, it is just plain weird.” (A subsequent Harris campaign press release referred to the former president as “old and quite weird?”

And Walz’s “weird” has stuck with Republicans, too – although not in a good way. Trump himself, appearing on Laura Ingraham’s Fox News program days later, attempted to employ the “I’m rubber, you’re glue” strategy of political rhetoric. “The whole thing is a con job. Just plain weird,” Trump fumed in reference to Harris.

Everyone has their theories as to why “weird” worked so well. Truth be told, visceral political insults are nothing new: Theodore Roosevelet once stated that political rival William McKinley “had no more backbone than a chocolate eclair” ahead of the 1900 presidential election, while notoriously-crude Lyndon B. Johnson infamously declared that Gerald Ford was “so dumb that he can’t fart and chew gum at the same time.” Sure, weird is shorter, punchier, and more memorable, but that can’t be it—can it?

Part of the allure is that, after years of increasingly vitriolic politics, “weird” represents a surprise inversion of the Trump establishment’s grand strategy—which has been, in short, to troll the libs into oblivion. The playbook for the far right during its decade of political ascendency has been pretty simple: be as provocative as possible and, when confronted, simply aggressively confront your rhetorical adversary and proclaim them a) too sensitive, b) lacking in humor, or c) unwilling to engage in a back-and-forth mud-slinging exercise. This strategy, which leaves opponents with no real options apart from throwing up their hands and walking away in deep frustration, has worked in Republicans’ favor quite well in the years since Trump came onto the scene.

“Weird” turns that relationship on its head; and makes Democrats the trolls. “Weird” is simple, easily deployed, and universally relatable; less earnest than post-2016 “Resistance” digital knife-fighters, and more akin to the “binders full of women” jab the party deployed against Mitt Romney during the 2012 presidential race. Trump’s response alone—essentially “I’m not weird, you’re weird!—is a powerful affirmation that Walz and Harris have managed to strike a deep political nerve.

Walz’s “weird” was a political gift handed down to Democrats at the perfect time, when the party was still in flux around Biden’s surprise departure and Harris’ sudden role as presumptive nominee. It gave the party something simple, elegant, and blisteringly effective to rally around, a ore broadly appealing and understandable rebuke than Clinton’s ill-fated “baskets of deplorables” barb in 2016. No more sermons on high from Biden about the future of American democracy, or esoteric disses like “Trump has the morals of an alley cat”: earnestly and organically, Walz and the Harris campaign have captured lighting in a bottle when it comes to youthful, distinctive, relatable political messaging.

Walz became Harris’ pick for vice presidential nominee not just because of his political bona fides, but because he’s helped rejuvenate party. That could go a long way toward defeating Trump and Vance in November.

https://www.fastcompany.com/91168140/tim-walz-changed-2024-election-viral-diss?partner=rss&utm_source=rss&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=rss+fastcompany&utm_content=rss