Kamala Harris has picked Tim Walz as her running mate, and lots of the credit has been given to one word: weird.
That’s how Walz has described Donald Trump, JD Vance, and many of their MAGA friends. And in the political jargon, it seems like it’s ‘cut through’.
It’s really interesting to me that in explaining the choice of Walz, lots of media outlets played a clip of him saying ‘…these guys are just weird. They’re running for “He-Man Women-Haters Club” or something.’
But the bit that resonated wasn’t the more provocative He-Man bit; it was the ‘weird’.
Presumably, because in one word, he’s captured something lots of people were feeling. But also because it fits his brand. He’s from the Midwest. He’s been a football coach. And ‘weird’ isn’t the kind of thing politicians normally say about each other, so he sounds like a regular guy.
(By the way, nor is ‘weird’ as angry as the Democrats sometimes get about Trump and co. It’s more bemused. Which also fits with Harris’ apparent strategy of raising an eyebrow or laughing at Trump, rather than getting irate. It cleverly diminishes some of his power to shock.)
The other person who’s notably good at this non-political, straight talking is of course… Donald Trump. ‘Sleepy Joe’; ‘crazy Kamala’; ‘little Marco’. Linguists agree that he tends to use simple words more than you’d expect of a politician: ‘good’, ‘great’, ‘bad’, ‘big’.
Maybe the Walz weird-wave is a sign that someone’s finally found a way to play the ex-President at his own linguistic game.
Written by Neil Taylor, Chief of Brand at Definition.
