Dan Pfeiffer, a former senior adviser to former President Obama, said the recent trend of calling Republicans “weird” has no downside but also is not Democrats’ “secret sauce.”
“Does calling MAGA Republicans weird actually move voters?” Pfeiffer wrote in his newsletter The Message Box. “Well, I hate to be the bearer of bad news, we haven’t (yet) found the secret sauce.”
He also pointed to a recent study done where voters were shown the various clips of Democrats calling Republicans, like former President Trump and his running mate Sen. JD Vance (R-Ohio), weird. The messaging had no significant impact on their vote choice, he said.
Vice President Harris’s campaign and her Democratic allies clung to the idea of calling their opponents weird.
Her running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz (D), may have been the originator of the comments. He said Vance’s comments about “childless cat ladies” was weird, and Democrats have run with it ever since.
“There is no downside to the message, but it doesn’t move the race in our direction,” Pfeiffer wrote.
Trump and Vance have largely brushed off the “weird comments,” even throwing them back in Harris and Walz’s direction.
The ex-Obama adviser also pointed to advertisements in 2020 and cautioned Democrats about falling for messaging that may not appeal to persuadable voters.
Now is the time to educate the public about Harris’s record, he said.
“There is no greater priority than informing voters about who Kamala Harris is, what she stands for, and what she will do as President,” Pfeiffer concluded. “That’s how this campaign will be won or lost.”