"Freedom" Soars, "Weird" Sticks, And A Race Is Transformed

Plus, the GOP abandons its strongest attack in favor of a much weirder one.

One Weird Trick To Define Your Opposition

It’s an old GOP tactic - accuse your opponents of not just being wrong, but outside the boundaries of normal. In the 1990s, then-Speaker Newt Gingrich ushered in a new era of highly personalized partisan rhetoric, advising fellow Republicans to use words like “bizarre” and “sick” when talking on television about Democrats. In the modern political era, Republicans spent many months trying to paint Democratic support for LGBTQ+ protections as something sinister and unnatural, with propagandists like Libs Of TikTok outright accusing Democrats of pedophilia.

Maybe it was the fact that those accusations sputtered in 2023, or maybe Democrats felt a huge surge of confidence and optimism after President Biden stepped aside and Vice President Harris became the presumptive nominee, or maybe it was the fact that GOP VP nominee JD Vance is singularly odd, but at some point in the past two weeks, the word “weird” was everywhere in descriptions of the GOP, even when it was only implied.

Above image: the type of headlines you get when people think you’re normal and not weird.

Vance seems to have suffered the worst of the “weird” attacks - here are the top words and phrases used about JD Vance in swing states during the 10-day period immediately after Biden stepped aside:

Above image: top 50 words & phrases used in posts mentioning JD Vance, July 21-31, 2024, swing states only (PA, WI, MI, NV, AZ, NC and GA), accounts with partisan signifiers in bios excluded.

Oof. (“Vladimir Futon”!!!)

And Trump isn’t being exempted either. Here are the top words and phrases used in posts mentioning the term “weird” during the same period:

Above image: top 50 words and phrases used in posts mentioning the word “weird,” July 21-31, 2024, swing states only, accounts with partisan signifiers in bios excluded.

A warning, though - “weird” seems to have peaked, and is likely to be stale before long…Democrats might want to rotate between synonyms like “odd,” “creepy,” etc. just to paint the picture without sounding robotic:

A New Birth Of “Freedom”

Meanwhile, on Team Normal, the Vice President is enjoying a surge of support that even her biggest stans didn’t dare hope for before Biden withdrew.

She even did the near-impossible - for 6 full days, she was mentioned online more than Donald Trump, who is normally the most talked-about person on the internet:

Above image: total number of posts each day mentioning Donald Trump and Vice President Harris, swing states only, July 21-31, 2024, excluding accounts with partisan signifiers in bios.

What’s more, the number of posts in that time period expressing positive sentiment was greater than the number expressing negative sentiment - another near-impossible feat for a national political figure:

Above image: share of posts expressing both positive and negative sentiment about each major political figure mentioned, July 21-31, 2024, swing states only, excluding accounts with partisan signifiers in bios.

Among the share of posts mentioning Vice President Harris that expressed positive sentiment, one prominent word stands out: freedom.

Above image: top words and phrases used in posts mentioning Vice President Harris that expressed positive sentiment, July 21-31, swing states only, excluding accounts with partisan signifiers in bios.

This is almost entirely due to the messaging success of the Harris For President campaign, which shared several posts (including a video ad) that leaned into the “freedom” theme - posts that were widely shared in the swing states:

There’s a big warning sign, though, in the posts that express negative sentiment - the Vice President’s association with President Biden’s border policies:

Above image: top words and phrases mentioning Vice President Harris that expressed negative sentiment from accounts located in swing states, July 21-31, 2024, accounts with partisan signifies in their bios excluded.

It would seem that this might be a strong attack against the Vice President, but there’s only one problem…Republicans and Trump himself have abandoned the attack, in favor of overt racism against Harris herself:

Above image: total number of posts shared daily in swing states mentioning either Vice President Harris and the border or Vice President Harris and the word “black,” July 21-31, excluding accounts with partisan signifiers in bios.

The fact that Trump shifted from a policy-based attack with real teeth to a purely racist attack is a gift to Vice President Harris. Trump may be betting that the country is as racist as he is, or that voters who aren’t won’t care. I think he’s dead wrong, and it seems he’s lost his opportunity to define the Vice President out of the gate, while he’s struggling to shake the impression that he and his VP pick are ultra-bizarre.

Looks like it’s freedom versus weird. I know which side I’m betting on.