Words for a Weird Campaign Season
How those of us getting motion sickness from the ups and downs of the 2024 election can use language to our advantage
Convicted criminal. Con man. Racist. Misogynist. Fraud. Traitor. Wanna-be Dictator. Existential danger to America. Any of these well-deserved labels should have demolished Donald Trump’s attempt to regain the U.S. Presidency. You have to laugh if the the one that finally does some damage is “weirdo.”
The person credited with injecting the word “weird” into this year’s political conversation is Tim Waltz, the governor of my home state of Minnesota. “These guys are just weird,” he said of Trump and his running mate JD Vance. The words went viral and are getting echoed all up and down the Democratic ticket. I’m not surprised it was Waltz. It fits with his small-town midwestern roots, where people are reluctant to be too harsh in calling out behavior that’s dumb or selfish or just plain nasty. “That’s weird” is usually enough of a corrective among those of us who were raised to do the right thing. This makes “weird” a bit self-selecting as a put-down. The easy remedy is to stop acting weird. Maybe that’s why Republicans are having such a hard time dealing with it.
There is a debate about how far the Democrats should push this unexpectedly…
