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Notes -
White Dudes for Harris
It should be remembered that it was the Democrat party that broke the ice on invoking White Identity Politics directly to muster political support. The Republican party has only ever used proxy rhetoric like "they have to come legally" or "tough on crime", but looking at the recent Convention it's clear the Republican strategy is to go for the Big Tent rather than directly appeal to white voters. It's the Harris campaign that makes the direct appeal to white men, and you would not see an event like this hosted within the Republican party.
This is another indication that we're probably over the hill of Peak Woke that a white identity is acknowledged in a non-critical context:
That's a huge shift in messaging from just a few years ago in the midst of the Floyd riots.
https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/donald-trump-weird-republicans-strange-bizarre-democrats-b2589514.html
Pure cope and seethe
Tbh I think the use of weird itself is a failure. All of the things they tried in the past — policies, threat to democracy, Project 2025, the economy, etc. have been neutralized more or less. Calling a candidate a threat to democracy after he’s been shot opens them up to charges of poisoning the discourse with violence. Trump isn’t behind P2025, so when they start that, he can simply say “I have nothing to do with that.” Policies don’t work either because most of what Biden Harris tried to do either failed or were unpopular. The economy is a huge loser for Harris because millions of people struggle to afford groceries and wistfully remember the Trump era as the era of cheap food, gas, housing and low unemployment. What’s left is “weird”, up to and including Vance apparently humping a couch. And I just don’t see that landing because it’s a fundamentally unserious accusation that betrays the fact that they have nothing serious to offer. It’s basically an admission of inferiority “look, I know I don’t have many accomplishments, and I know my ideas are unpopular, but those guys are weird and I’m a normal person.”
It also doesn't help the online right has just returned the charge with pictures of a Biden cabinet members surrounded by people in dog masks, Harris with a drag queen (or possibly a clearly non-passing trans woman in woman coded dress), etc etc. It is very difficult to celebrate "queer identities" and then call your opponents "weird" when they are, at least publicly quite normie, (with exceptions of Trump's bombastic used car salesman style speeches, which are at least "normal" in the cultural context of people being used to used car salemen).
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