Republicans Are Weird

I thought for a while that just talking about the consequential nature of the presidential election, talking about all of the bad things that Donald Trump and the Republicans are set to do if in fact they regain power, was going to be enough that fear was going to be a great motivator. And what I've realized since the seismic shift of Joe Biden stepping aside and making way for

Vice President Kamala Harris is extraordinary. People need hope. People need not just to feel like, oh I want to go and have a beer with said candidate, but they need to feel inspired. And it is harder to invoke

inspiration than it is to invoke fear. For better or worse, Donald Trump has been a master at inspiring his cult into doing some of the most ridiculous shit, like wearing diapers, like putting on huge maxipads on their ears during convention, like buying his gold sneakers, or his version of the Bible.

He has been a master at the grift and making himself the avatar for their grievances, for all the ways in which America has done them wrong, because we're no longer centering and I should say this that it's still really not true, but in their minds, it is that we're no longer centering whiteness and maleness as the default

in our society. That we have made considerable advances towards creating more space and room at the table for other people, that through laws passed around bodily autonomy, around financial independence for women in particular, That there has been shifts in this country over the last fifty years. Now, while all of us look at that and we say, wow, look how far America has come, Republicans look at that and they say, oh my god, look how far America has

strayed from its white, Christian centered values. What I am loving right now is something that is so fucking small, and in hindsight, you're just like, this is what it took is that Republicans are finally being labeled as weird, not crazy. I am happy to use that term, but it's also you know, offensive to some, but weird. Your preoccupation with women's uteruses, with cat ladies with no fault divorce.

It's weird. The behavior is odd, right, Donald Trump hugging a flag, as Shapiro points out, He's like, I love the flag, but I'm not gonna like march over to it and like and hug it. That's weird behavior. And so, according to ABC News, the quote weird message appears to have given Democrats a narrative advantage they rarely had when

President Joe Biden was still running for reelection. Trump's campaign, which so often shapes political discussions with the former president's pronouncements, has spent days trying to flip the script by highlighting

things about the Democrats it says are weird. And you know, many people are saying, it is incredible that the Trump vance team and ticket have been finding it almost impossible to come up with a credible response because they tried to say, oh, the fact that Vice President Kamala Harris

laughs and has joy is somehow weird. Really, I think the fact that Donald Trump has been on the political scene for over a decade and we've actually never seen him laugh, unless, of course, he is poking fun at, belittling, dehumanizing other people, then maybe he'll give off some type of sinister, you know, cartoon villain type of laugh. But this is not a party that has anything to do

with joy. We watch that at the RNC. So when you are gonna juxtapose that between visions and memes of Vice President Kamala Harris, you know, enjoying conversations with children, marching in college bands, being at the LGBTQ parade, just like enjoying people and laughing. They think that that's weird. But JD. Van's talking about the fact that people who don't have children shouldn't have the same amount of rights and pay more taxes and that's supposed to be some

normal shit and doubling and tripling down on it. Or how about most recently, Donald Trump being interviewed by that Ingram person right over at Fox and she's trying to clear up for him the fact that he told Christians that if they vote in this election, that they'll never have to vote again. And she says to him in the interview, trying to force feed him the right lines so that he doesn't seem like the dictator that he is.

She says, well, you know, the left is trying to make it seem as if you know, there's never going to be another election again. So can you clarify what it is you said to the group of Christians that you were speaking in front of. Donald Trump goes off on one of his Trumpian fucking tangents and says exactly what he said in front of those Christians, Well, Christians

don't really vote life. That they need to understand that they don't really vote, and that if they vote this time, yeah, they're not going to have to vote again because everything's going to need to be fixed and they won't have to worry about voting. What have you ever heard a former president or a candidate for president ever talk about the fact that people won't need to vote ever again. That isn't something that democracies or somebody that believes in

democracy utters. So Ingram tries to redirect him again and again he's like, nah, I got this and continues on with the same bullshit rhetoric of being a dictator. That shit is weird. When you're rambling about Hannibal Lecter as if that's a real person as opposed to a character from Silence of the Lambs, that shit is weird. So the fact is that it's taken this revival of energy with a new candidate for Democrats to somehow find their messaging.

Now we are less than one hundred days away from this election, and it looks as if we've gotten some spirit, some hoot spot, if you will, in our ability to take on Republicans and meet them where we are. Because the thing is, we're not trying to name call in the way that let's say, Tennessee representatives are trying to call Kamala Harris everything outside of her fucking name, whether it's colored, whether it's ding dong, whether it's not that smart,

not that bright, blah blah blah blah blah. All they are doing with this continued line of name calling and race baiting is doing Democrats a job for them. Even on Fox you have anchor saying, well, do you think that this kind of name calling is going to actually bring people in? And they don't care because they all think that they can somehow model Donald Trump, and that's

going to mean winning for them, folks. It doesn't. It won't because the only person who apparently can have that kind of deep character flaw and still continue to rise is Donald Trump. Everybody else that's tried to impersonate him loses. So I love the direction that this campaign is taking. And it's only been a little over a week that

we've had this seismic shift. But the fact is that the campag can feels younger, fresher, and revitalized in ways that seem very much in touch with social media and like culture and are being able to activate and energize people across age spectrums because we are seeing things that

we've never seen before. There's a town in Florida. It's called the Villages, and it's like some retirement village I believe for like very old, wealthy white folks, and they like drive around in golf carts, and I feel like it became really popularized like these folks, because they became like uber Trumpers. Well, most recently, these golf cart having

folks organized a rally for Vice President Kamala Harris. Over the course of a week and a half, we have seen calls that began with we win with black women to we win with black men, to white women answer the call, to Southeast Asians, to Indians to now you

have the Latino call coming up. The white Dudes call happened, and Elon Musk was so upset with the White Dudes call and the fact that they were bringing in over three million dollars that he suspended their Twitter account during their call and the hashtag because that's how fucking scared these people are, because you know, they are getting into formation. Every single group is getting into formation behind Vice President

Kamala Harris. Why because they don't want fascism. So whether it's disabled voters for Kamala, right, cat ladies for Kamala, white dudes, white women united for Kamala, women united for like, all of this is coming together because guess what we all agree on now. Democracy is on the ballot, which it's been, but we actually feel like we can do something about it because we feel like we have a

candidate that we can get behind. And folks, I will say this, Look, you know, back in twenty twenty I didn't want Joe Biden, but I also in twenty twenty four didn't want Joe Biden to step aside because I was like, unless they are going to unify behind Vice President Kamala Harris, I want no parts of it. I want no parts of a fucking open primary at convention that will be a fucking disaster and ensure that trumps

and wins. But for once, holy shit, they listened and Joe Biden set the fucking tone from the moment jump and said, oh no, Vice President Harris, that's our girl, and that's who we're getting behind, and everyone fell in line. We've never seen Democrats do that. So now here we are where the messaging is like, Okay, Republicans are weird. Run with that shit, do what you may, and guess what, it's not that hard. It really is not that hard, because Wow, some of the shit that comes out of

these people's mouths is just wild. Right, it's wild, and it's ridiculous and it's dangerous. But to say that it is weird and have that stick, it's absolutely fucking brilliant. Here is some other thoughts on this. It said many Democrats comments appear to be allusions to a twenty twenty one interview with Vans in which he slamms some prominent This is again coming from ABC News. Some prominent Democrats without biological children, including Harris as childless cat ladies with

no direct still in America. Because again, this is what they think. This is not just a JD vance off on the Fringes commentary. Their policies align with the rhetoric that is coming out of his mouth. But they go on to say, but Harris's own characterization of Trump as weird may date back even further. In his twenty twenty one book, political reporter Edward Isaac Dover wrote that Harris reportedly gathered with AIDS in twenty eighteen to prepare for

her own presidential bid. As staff aimed to prepare her for how she'd react if during a debate Trump stood over her, as he did Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton in twenty sixteen. Harris reportedly equipped, I turn around and say, why are you being so weird? What's wrong with you? So while the right decides to melt down over this like this is just it, you don't have to really dig that deep for people that are as deep as

a puddle. Do you know what I'm saying. I feel like Democrats have been overworking themselves over the past ten years to try and distinguish themselves from an ideological makeup that is in fact, just fucking weird. It is handmaid's tail weird. It is nineteenth century weird. When you're pulling up and digging for policies that were passed in the nineteenth century in the twenty first century, yeah, that shit

is weird. So here we are where in I believe in the next couple of days, I think what some are looking at is around August seventh for the campaign to name a running mate as we head into convention at the end of August, and you know, many people have weighed in. I've weighed in in terms of like who makes the most sense. I think that it is obviously going to be a white man. I think that it is obviously probably going to be someone from a

battleground state, which makes sense. I stand on the fact that I do not think that it should be Shapiro, only for the reason that we need him to hold down Pennsylvania and be a very staunch surrogate and advocate. But he needs to hold down the state during this critical election. We cannot just hand that over, so I take him out of it. I think that Kelly Mark Kelly in Arizona is an interesting pick. I think that for his astronaut background, as military background, his gun reform background,

I think that he is a good candidate. Other folks are looking at Waltz and Basher, and I don't think that we gain anything with Basher. Waltz is an interesting one. Governor of Minnesota, another important state. He has won multiple times when he was a member of Congress in a rural red district. So I think that that adds a lot of flair into this campaign. Rural red in comparison to the liberal from California. So you have to look at this ticket. And I disagree with some folks that say, oh,

vice presidents don't matter. Is that right? Tell that to John McCain and Sarah Palin. It absolutely does matter. Tell that to Donald Trump and Mike Pence. Because Donald Trump needed white evangelicals who weren't trying to fuck with him, right, And then so you get this weirdo Mike Pence, whose staunch religious zealot to be on your ticket. I think that tickets matter. Joe Biden and Barack Obama. Barack Obama was in the Senate for a hot minute before he

ran for president. He needed someone with the wisdom and with the sensibility and with the favor that Joe Biden could bring in for him. So that vice presidential pick mattered, and I think that this one does too. So I think there are a lot of things to weigh in about what would propel this ticket, which has gained so

much energy in such a short time. You don't want to do anything that is going to be a drag on the ticket when we need as much momentum to continue to propel us into early voting, which starts in some places folks in September. We're heading into August, right when convention is over, which is starting I think like August nineteenth or twentieth, right and goes during that week we're coming out. You blink, it's Labor Day. You blink again,

and early voting starts in some states. So election is underway, Like we're waiting on November fifth for probably I was going to say the results, but we know we're not

getting results on Member fifth. I think it's important for us to acknowledge that the choice is going to matter, as well as all of the surrogates that are getting out there, all of the organizing that is happening from the grassroots, all of the money that is being raised, and as Vice President Kamala Harris is saying, this is a people run campaign, it is people engineered, and she says that her administration is going to be people centered

and people focused. So this is why you are seeing Republicans just grasping at straws trying to figure out their path forward because their entire campaign was built around Joe

Biden being too old. You subtract Joe Biden from the scenario, and now they don't know what to do because, like Joy Reid said recently on Twitter, I wish that her colleagues in the media would have the same fucking energy around Trump's age now being the oldest person to run for the presidency that they did around Joe Biden, because those issues still remain, but now it's just not on

the Democrats side. So we'll see. But as of right now, I haven't seen all of the barrage of stories now, you know, pivoting to how old Donald Trump is and how he seems to be in cognitive decline, you know, because Hannibal Lecter and all, and that's just like the tip of the iceberg. I'm gonna leave it there today, my dear friends. That is it for me on Woke af And remember the damn shop is open and I am feeling hopeful as buck, and so should you, because

the future does in fact feel woke. So head over to Danielmoudy dot com and scoop a t shirt, a tote, something that signals, as we're headed into this election season, that the future is indeed woke as always. Power to the people and to all the people. Power, get woke and stay woke as fuck.