[1andrew1]

Looks like the Democrats have found an effective angle on Trump and his sidekicks that is hitting home: describing their views as weird.

“Some of what he and his running mate are saying, it’s just plain weird,” Harris said during a fundraiser last weekend, as the audience laughed. “I mean, that’s the box you put that in, right?”

Democrats have been trying to portray Trump and his followers as part of an extreme rightwing fringe of American politics for years, including after the January 6 2021 attack on the US Capitol, with mixed success.

But the hardline views on abortion and disparaging comments on women by Trump’s running mate, Ohio senator JD Vance, have highlighted a fresh line of attack from the Democrats. Quips such as Vance’s in a 2021 speech that America was run by “childless cat ladies” have gone viral online, turbocharging the new strategy.

“These are weird people on the other side, they want to take books away, they want to be in your exam room, that’s what it comes down to,” Tim Walz, the Democratic governor of Minnesota and contender to be Harris’s running mate, told MSNBC two days after she entered the race.

An independent Harris supporters group called “Won’t Pac Down” last month launched an ad called “these guys are just weird” that has since gone viral featuring a series of creepy male “Maga Republicans” saying they want the “government way more involved in your sex life”.