How Kamala Harris’s ‘queer and free’ message resonated

“They are strange.”

With that simple criticism — as well as a more common-sense message — Vice President Kamala Harris’s presidential campaign has shifted the conversation away from the weaknesses of her boss, President Joe Biden, and focused on her opponent, Donald Trump.

The change in tone was on full display at protests this week, where she appeared with her new vice presidential candidate, Minnesota Governor Tim WalzWith Beyonce’s “Freedom” playing as the soundtrack, the pair demonstrated that they want to protect American freedoms while their “weird” Republican opponent, Trump and his running mate JD Vance, threaten to take them away.

“We will not go back,” Ms Harris told an enthusiastic crowd in Philadelphia, leading a refrain that has become the campaign’s default slogan.

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

Even the vice president’s press releases, sent from the campaign that once served Mr. Biden, reflected a shift in tone from deeply serious to more lighthearted.

Just five days after Mr Biden resigned, a spokesperson for Harris joked that Mr Trump’s speech made him sound “like someone you wouldn’t want to sit near at a restaurant”.

Campaign strategists say the new messaging appears to be resonating with Democratic-leaning voters because it makes voting for Harris seem more like a rational choice and less like a civic duty. But it’s too early to say whether this newfound goodwill toward a vice president who has struggled to capture the attention of American voters until recently will last through Election Day in November.

California Lieutenant Governor Eleni Kounalakis, a Democrat who counts the vice president as a close friend, said the campaign’s fresh rhetoric reflected Ms Harris’s “great sense of humor” and her ability to “communicate well at a basic level”.

“The truth is, these are proving to be her strengths, and her cheerfulness is breaking through the dark, menacing undertones of Donald Trump and his running mate.”

Meanwhile, Trump, who has long been known as an effective slanderer and an aggressive campaigner since he entered politics during the 2016 presidential campaign, struggled to respond — especially to the “bizarre” phrasing.

“They’re weird. Nobody ever called me weird. I’m a lot of things, but I’m not weird,” Trump said last week in an interview with conservative radio host Clay Travis.

He returned to the theme at a Friday rally in Montana, telling the crowd: “We are a very resilient people. We want strong borders, we want good elections, we want low interest rates, we want to be able to buy homes.”

“I think we’re not weird, they’re the weird ones.”

Polls show Ms Harris, who once trailed Mr Trump, now leading.

David Polyansky, who served as deputy campaign manager for Republican Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’ 2024 presidential campaign, said the shift could be because Harris is beating Trump at his own game.

Since his first run for president, Trump has benefited from being the main political topic in this country, enjoying what insiders call “earned media,” or free press.

But it was Ms Harris’s dramatic rise to the top of the Democratic ticket just weeks before the Democratic National Convention that has dominated headlines and airwaves in recent weeks — and she did it without having to do any major media interviews.

Mr Polyansky said getting past the former president, who had just faced an assassination attempt, was no easy feat.

“That’s really remarkable,” he said.

Her campaign appeared to get a further boost when she selected Mr. Walz as her vice-presidential candidate.

A survey produced by the New York Times and Siena College From August 5 to 9, Ms. Harris led Trump 50% to 46% in three key battleground states — Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and Michigan.

It comes later. a recent YouGov pollconducted on August 4-6, showed she would win the popular vote, with 45% of respondents saying they would vote for her in November, compared to 43% for Trump.

It’s a reversal of fortune. A similar YouGov poll, conducted nearly three weeks ago, shows she lost by three points.

In fact, it was Mr. Walz who first used the “weird” label when he appeared on social media last month to support Ms. Harris’s fledgling candidacy. He quickly used the label again at a Philadelphia rally with Ms. Harris, saying of their Republican opponents: “These guys are creepy and, yeah, weird as hell.”

Mr Walz’s folksy style seemed to resonate with many voters interviewed by the BBC, who said they liked the Minnesota governor because he spoke frankly.

Over a cigarette, Tyler Engel — an Ohio independent who was vacationing in St Augustine, Florida — said Mr Walz “seemed like a normal guy, a family man”.

“If there is one thing we are hungry for in this country, it is ordinary people,” Mr. Engel added.

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

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

Some political advisers were amazed at the effectiveness of the “weird” label. Many said it was groundbreaking because it seemed authentic, not a catchphrase or audience-tested cliché, and it came across “quickly and naturally.”

Brian Brokaw, who worked on several of Ms. Harris’s campaigns and ran a Super PAC supporting her 2020 presidential bid, said calling Trump and JD Vance “weird” actually repackaged the theme of President Biden’s “threat to democracy” in a way that was “very relatable — almost lighthearted — perhaps less serious and more colloquial.”

The term, he said, immediately helped reframe the race from a referendum on four years of Mr Biden to a question of “do we really want to go back to what we did during the Trump era?”

Republican pollster Frank Luntz was more skeptical.

On BBC Newsnight on Tuesday, he declared Ms Harris the new frontrunner, noting that she had captured a new “momentum”.

But he dismissed the “weird” label as “weird in and of itself” and said it failed to resonate with voters.

The catchphrase appears to have been echoed by some undecided voters interviewed by the BBC. Jacob Fisher, an independent voter from Atlanta, said he thought calling Trump and Mr Vance “weird” was appropriate and only slightly insulting in the age of political name-calling.

“I think it’s fair,” Mr. Fisher said. “You can’t say it’s harsh because you have another guy talking about his opponent being a worm. So how is that ‘weird’? I don’t know, but you can’t really complain if you’re Donald Trump.”

However, voters who say they support Trump have been less impressed with the campaign’s recent messaging.

Frank and Theresa Walker of Illinois shared the view that the US is “going to hell” under a Biden-Harris administration, and Gem Lowery — a Trump voter in Florida — said she didn’t like Harris’s choice for vice president or the “weird” label they used when discussing Trump, Vance and the Republican platform.

“I think the Democrats are weird,” Lowery told the BBC. “So no, I don’t think it’s right to call the Republicans ‘weird’.”

Ms. Harris “kid’s summer” will not last forever.

While the selection of Mr. Walz and the upcoming Democratic National Convention will certainly maintain Ms. Harris’s media dominance, experts agree that the campaign will soon have to change course.

Mr. Brokaw, a longtime adviser to Ms. Harris, said her campaign would need to work to rein in the enthusiasm she has garnered since the vice president became the Democratic nominee.

“The peak of the honeymoon period is the conference, and then it’s going to be a struggle for two months with probably some debate,” Mr Brokaw said. “It’s an exciting time, but at some point it’s going to come back to reality and then it’s time to start.”

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

Republican strategist David Polyansky said the label “works in a broad sense,” but he believes the message on the economy and immigration will ultimately resonate with voters in November.

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

Additional reporting from Mike Wendling and Rachel Looker