How Kamala Harris’ ‘weird and free’ message is reaching

“They’re weird.”

With that simple diss — and a much clearer message — Vice President Kamala Harris’ presidential campaign has shifted the focus away from the weaknesses of her boss, President Joe Biden, and spotlighted her rival, Donald Trump.

The change in tone was on full display at the rallies this week, where he was seen his new choice for vice president, Minnesota Governor Tim Walz. With Beyonce’s Freedom as their theme song, the pair charged that they are determined to defend American freedom while their “weird” Republican opponents, Trump and his running mate JD Vance, threaten to take them away.

“We’re not going back,” Ms. Harris told an enthusiastic crowd in Philadelphia, leading a group in what has become a campaign slogan.

It’s a stripped-down version of Mr Biden’s 2020 message – that Trump is “a threat to democracy” – which casts the former president as out of touch with American life.

Even the vice president’s news reports, sent to the campaign that once worked for Mr. Biden, showed a shift in tone from deep to more light-hearted.

Just five days after Mr Biden stepped aside, a spokesman for Harris joked that Trump’s speech made him sound like “someone who wouldn’t want to sit next to a restaurant”.

Campaign strategists say the new message appears to be off-putting to Democratic-leaning voters because it makes voting for Ms. Harris sound like a rational choice, rather than a civic duty. But it’s too early to say whether this newfound enthusiasm for the vice president, who until recently has struggled to get the attention of American voters, will last until election day in November.

Lt. Gov. Eleni Kounalakis of California, a Democrat who considers the vice president a close friend, said the campaign’s new ad showed Ms. Harris’s “great fun” and her ability to “speak well at a basic level.”

“The truth is, these things seem to be his strength, and his happiness goes through the darkness, the scary undertones of Donald Trump and his partner.

Meanwhile, Trump, who has long been known as an active campaigner for mudslinging and enthusiasm since entering politics during the 2016 presidential campaign, has struggled to push back — especially against the “weird” frame.

“They are the strangest ones. No one ever called me weird. I’m many things, but it’s surprising that I’m not,” Trump said last week in an interview with popular broadcaster Clay Travis.

He returned to the theme at Friday’s rally in Montana, telling the crowd: “We are strong people. We want to have strong borders, we want good elections, we want low interest rates, we want to know. to buy a house.”

“I think we’re against castles, they’re weird.”

Ms Harris, who once followed Trump, is now on the front foot, polls suggest.

David Polyansky, who served as deputy campaign manager for Florida’s Republican Governor Ron DeSantis’ 2024 presidential campaign, said the change may have been because Ms. Harris was beating Trump at his own game.

Since he first ran for president, Trump has benefited from being the top political story in the country, enjoying what political insiders like to call “earned media”, or a free press.

But it’s Ms Harris’s dramatic leap to the top of the Democratic ticket just weeks before the Democratic National Convention that has dominated the headlines and airwaves in recent weeks – and she’s done it without sitting down for a major media interview.

Elevating the former president, who recently faced assassination attempts, is no small feat, said Mr Polyansky.

“It’s really amazing,” he said.

His campaign appears to have been boosted by selecting Mr Walz as his running mate.

Survey by the New York Times and Siena College from August 5 to 9 put Ms. Harris ahead of Trump by 50% to 46% in three key battleground states – Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and Michigan.

It comes after a recent YouGov surveyconducted on August 4-6, which suggested he would win the popular vote, with 45% of respondents saying they would vote for him in November, compared to 43% for Trump.

That’s a reversal of fortune. A similar poll by YouGov, conducted about three weeks ago, he showed him losing by three points.

It was actually Mr Walz who was the first to use the “weird” label when he made a media appearance last month in support of upstart Ms Harris. He quickly used it again at that Philadelphia meeting with Ms. Harris when he talked about their Republican opponents: “These guys are scary and yeah, they’re awesome as hell.”

Mr Walz’s personal ways seemed to resonate with several voters who spoke to the BBC. They said they liked the Minnesota governor because he was outspoken.

Between drags, Tyler Engel – an independent Ohio voter on vacation in St Augustine, Florida – said Mr Walz “seems like a normal guy, a family man”.

“And if there’s one thing we’re hungry for in this country, it’s ordinary people,” added Mr. Engel.

Another voter, John Patterson of Chambersburg, Pennsylvania, said he found Mr Walz to be “a very honest person”.

“What you see is what you get with him,” he added.

Some political advisers were surprised by the “strange” label’s performance. Many say it broke because it felt authentic, it wasn’t an audience-tested phrase or cliche, and it came “fast and regular”.

Calling Trump and JD Vance “weird” effectively reframed President Biden’s “threat to democracy” theme in a way that was “understandable — almost light-hearted — that might have been less powerful and more relatable,” said Brian Brokaw, who worked for Ms. Harris’s campaigns also ran a Super PAC that supported his 2020 presidential bid.

He said the word helped quickly reverse the race from Mr. Biden’s four-year interview with the question “do we really want to go back to what we were doing under Trump?”

Republican voter Frank Luntz was more skeptical.

On BBC Newsnight on Tuesday, he announced Ms Harris as the new front runner, noting that she had taken on a new “momentum”.

But he rejected the “weird” label and said it was “weird in itself”, saying it did not resonate with voters.

A catchy phrase seemed to strike a chord with several undecided voters interviewed by the BBC. Jacob Fisher, an independent Atlanta voter, said he thought calling Trump and Mr. Vance “weird” was appropriate and only a mild insult in an era of political name-calling.

“I think it’s fair,” said Mr Fisher. “You can’t say it’s too bad because you have another person talking about his competitors being vermin. So ‘extraordinary’? I don’t know, but you can’t really complain when you’re Donald Trump. “

Still, voters who say they support Trump were not happy with the campaign’s latest messaging.

Frank and Theresa Walker of Illinois shared the opinion that the US will “go to hell” under the Biden-Harris administration, and Gem Lowery – a Trump voter in Florida – said that he did not like the choice of Harris for the position of vice president or “weird.” ” is the label they used when discussing Trump, Mr. Vance and the Republican platform.

“I think the Democrats are the weirdest,” Lowery told the BBC. “So, I don’t think that’s fair to call Republicans ‘weird.’

Mrs. Harris “Best summer” it won’t last forever.

While the choice of Mr Walz and the Democratic National Convention will be guaranteed to end Ms Harris’s dominance of the media, experts agree that the campaign will have to shift gears soon.

Mr. Brokaw, a longtime adviser to Mrs. Harris, said his campaign will need to work to curb the enthusiasm it has enjoyed since the vice president was elected from the Democratic Alliance.

“The peak of the honeymoon period is the conference, and it’s going to be a bad two months maybe with the debates,” Mr. Brokaw said. “This is an exciting time, but at some point we’re going to come back to reality and then it’s time.”

“If we’re still talking about Trump and Vance being weird in October, I think I’d be surprised,” he added.

David Polyansky, a Republican strategist, said the label “works well from 60,000 feet”, but believes the message on the economy and immigration will ultimately draw voters in November.

“So for Trump, it’s important that he doesn’t take the hurdle, he focuses on his message and reminds people of his record and the administration’s failure on both of those issues.”

Additional reporting from Mike Wendling and Rachel Looker