News

23310 readers

3958 users here now

Welcome to the News community!

Rules:

1. Be civil

Attack the argument, not the person. No racism/sexism/bigotry. Good faith argumentation only. This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban. Do not respond to rule-breaking content; report it and move on.

2. All posts should contain a source (url) that is as reliable and unbiased as possible and must only contain one link.

Obvious right or left wing sources will be removed at the mods discretion. We have an actively updated blocklist, which you can see here: https://lemmy.world/post/2246130 if you feel like any website is missing, contact the mods. Supporting links can be added in comments or posted seperately but not to the post body.

3. No bots, spam or self-promotion.

Only approved bots, which follow the guidelines for bots set by the instance, are allowed.

4. Post titles should be the same as the article used as source.

Posts which titles don’t match the source won’t be removed, but the autoMod will notify you, and if your title misrepresents the original article, the post will be deleted. If the site changed their headline, the bot might still contact you, just ignore it, we won’t delete your post.

5. Only recent news is allowed.

Posts must be news from the most recent 30 days.

6. All posts must be news articles.

No opinion pieces, Listicles, editorials or celebrity gossip is allowed. All posts will be judged on a case-by-case basis.

7. No duplicate posts.

If a source you used was already posted by someone else, the autoMod will leave a message. Please remove your post if the autoMod is correct. If the post that matches your post is very old, we refer you to rule 5.

8. Misinformation is prohibited.

Misinformation / propaganda is strictly prohibited. Any comment or post containing or linking to misinformation will be removed. If you feel that your post has been removed in error, credible sources must be provided.

9. No link shorteners.

The auto mod will contact you if a link shortener is detected, please delete your post if they are right.

10. Don't copy entire article in your post body

For copyright reasons, you are not allowed to copy an entire article into your post body. This is an instance wide rule, that is strictly enforced in this community.

founded 1 year ago

MODERATORS

[email protected]

418

Kamala Harris allies deploy new Trump attack line: he is ‘just plain weird’ (www.theguardian.com)

submitted 3 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

82 comments fedilink hide all child comments

US Democrats have spent recent days trying out a relatively new attack line on Donald Trump: that he is weird. The tactic is almost certainly calibrated to resonate with young and independent voters who, polls show, are moving from marked disinterest in the now-dropped matchup between Joe Biden and his presidential predecessor to engagement in the 100-day contest between Trump and Kamala Harris.

In a press release Thursday, vice-president and presumptive Democratic nominee Kamala Harris issued a list of the main takeaways of what Trump had given the American people. “Is Donald Trump OK?” the X message said. The seventh of nine entries was: “Trump is old and quite weird?”

At a fundraising event in Massachusetts on Saturday, Harris tried out the line again, describing what Trump and running mate JD Vance had been saying about her as “just plain weird”.

“I mean that’s the box you put that in,” Harris said after Trump had called her “a bum” the previous day and Vance disparaged her in 2021 as a “childless cat (lady)”.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] [email protected] 44 points 3 months ago (1 children)

I think this is to try to achieve two things.

First, criticizing / annoying Trump.

Second, to try to recast Harris as the more mainstream American. Your typical mayo-American suburban mom type's immediate reaction to Harris is going to revolve around a comparison of skin tones and evaluation of just how other Harris is. Pointing out that Trump is weird implicitly implies that Harris is normal by contrast.

Same reason she's going to pick some completely uninteresting Generic White Guy as her running mate.

[–] [email protected] 17 points 3 months ago (1 children)

Yes. This is a careful, calculated, psychological move, just like you said.

It's very clever. By asking if Trump is weird, the natural response of a human is to check Trump's actions and traits against your natural biases and expectations based on your 'in group', either to evaluate if he's weird or to try to defend him by building a rebuttal. Unless you hang out with racist billionaire authoritarian narcissists often, he's going to be very weird to nearly everyone.

And again like you said, it takes the wind out of the most obvious counter to Kamala, her 'otherness'.

It's brilliant.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 3 months ago

I agree with you. I read an article (can’t remember where it was from) that basically said right wingers have become detached from reality and normal America because they are insulated in their little online world and social media safe spaces. The general public has already heard that Trump and his ilk are a threat to democracy, this point has already been made. Highlighting the fact they are weird, gross and lack basic human decency is a brilliant move, like you said.