WASHINGTON (AP) — Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz was working even before he was on the vice presidential running list. Donald Trump and Republicans to the American public as “just weird.”
“These are strange people on the other side. They want to take the books away. They want to be in your exam room,” Walz said in a TV interview last month.
The message started with news interviews and eventually spread like wildfire on social media with the help of young Americans. The simple terminology of labeling the other side as “strange” or “quirky” is not revolutionary or sophisticated in American politics, but represents a new framing for Democrats who have spent the last eight years trying to defeat Trump and Trumpism by personifying him as the greatest. a threat to democracy.
“The opposite of normalizing authoritarianism is to make it weird, to shout it out loud, to make fun of it.” Jennifer Mercieca, a Texas A&M University historian who wrote a book on Trump’s rhetoric, said. “Say, ‘Hey, it’s weird what you’re doing when you call out your opposition enemies instead of saying they’re good people with different political preferences.'”
Now the party is turning the page with a new generation of candidates who are trying not only to appeal to Americans’ fears about what a second Trump presidency would mean, but also to brand the policies and actions of the Republican Party as abnormal. And Democrats see no more effective messenger for this new offensive than Walz, the 60-year-old Midwestern father who was chosen Tuesday as their vice presidential nominee.
“Gov. Walz can get the job done and help establish that we are a team of normals,” freshman Democratic Representative Greg Landsman of Ohio said in a statement Tuesday. “We are pragmatic, reliable and bipartisan.”
Walz’s ability to speak in layman’s terms about politics and policy, combined with his awareness of the internet’s time management, has helped propel the little-known politician onto the national stage and onto the “For You” social media pages of millions of Gen Z voters. be decisive for the Democrats in November.
Dubbed “cool dad” online, the news of Walz running for the Democratic nomination sparked a stream of online memes, including one that read “To the window to the Walz,” a reference to the 2003 hit song “Get Low.” Lil Jon and the East Side Boyz. On TikTok, users created 60-second montages of Walz talking about the phenomenon of Charli XCX’s new album Brat, which she says helped explain her young daughter, mixed with footage of her insulting GOP vice presidential candidate Sen. JD Vance. commented “childless cat ladies”.
“Go ahead and keep humiliating people. Go ahead. Oh my god, they were following cat people. Good luck with that,” Walz says in the MSNBC clip, which has more than 150,000 likes on TikTok. “Turn on the Internet. See what the Cat People do when you chase them.”
But the same qualities that landed Walz on the Democratic ticket are already being used against him by Republicans, who have just in the last few hours branded him “weird” and “radical.”
Trump sent out a fundraising message on Tuesday calling Walz a “dangerous liberal” and saying he would “unleash HELL ON EARTH.”
But Walz’s legislative work on issues such as protecting abortion rights, legalizing recreational marijuana, and restricting gun use has helped him gain popularity among young voters in communities across the country beyond his own blue state.
Voters of Tomorrow, an organization led by Generation Z that represents young political activists and voters, threw its full support behind Walz after weeks of campaigning on his behalf, saying he has “dedicated his life to educating and empowering young people as an educator and public servant.”
“Governor Walz gets bonus points for articulating exactly how young Americans feel about Donald Trump and JD Vance: They’re weird,” Santiago Mayer, the group’s leader, said in a statement. “Trump and Vance are strangely fixated on taking away freedoms from Americans and strangely obsessed with culture wars.”
