THOSE WHO PAY attention to trends in the American political landscape will have noticed a new line of attack adopted by Democrats seeking to avoid another four years of President Donald J Trump.

As Fox News anchor Jesse Watters noted in a broadcast this week, the Democrats have used the word “weird” in publicly describing Republicans and their party platform over 140 times since Kamala Harris became their presumptive nominee. 

Where has this new strategy come from? Much of it is rooted in Democratic opposition to the Project 2025 manifesto.

Donald Trump has repeatedly tried to distance himself from the hyper-conservative policy document, published by the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank. Trump has referred to some of the ideas in the manifesto, which runs over 900 pages, as “absolutely ridiculous and abysmal”. After much vitriol from Trump – including characterising those behind the document as “the severe right” – the head of the project, Paul Dans, resigned his leadership on Tuesday night. 

While Trump is no stranger to amplifying fringe ideas, it appears that Project 2025 has become a millstone around the former president’s neck – forcing him to take positions on proposals that are unpopular and, in many cases, downright strange. 

However, much of what is contained within the group’s mission document, titled Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise, aligns with the tenor of Trump’s own stated ambitions. Perhaps most crucially, a new book written by the document’s architect Kevin Roberts features a foreword by Trump’s vice president pick JD Vance, who wrote: “Never before has a figure with Roberts’s depth and stature within the American Right tried to articulate a genuinely new future for conservatism.” 

Page one of the document makes reference to the “toxic normalisation of transgenderism with drag queens and pornography invading school libraries” and “the totalitarian cult known today as ‘The Great Awokening’”. The manifesto also includes calls for pornography to be criminalised and for those who participate in its creation and distribution to be “imprisoned”. It also contains paternalistic sentiments such as “without women, there are no children”.

It proposes sweeping reforms that would harshly tighten America’s border controls, and centralise far more power in the president’s hands, including currently independent bodies such as the Department of Justice, the FBI, the Federal Communications Commission and the Federal Trade Commission. 

The policies outlined in the document do not appear to be popular among the American electorate. On 12 July, YouGov published a poll which found only 13% of Americans liked the document, while 39% had somewhat or very unfavourable views about it. Nearly half of all respondents did not know about it.

I’m telling you: these guys are weird. pic.twitter.com/fvNRNf7T7T

— Tim Walz (@Tim_Walz) July 24, 2024

In that respect, Trump’s own running mate is perhaps that most high-profile politician to give credence to the document by endorsing Roberts, who is president of the Heritage Foundation.

Trump picked Vance a matter of days after surviving an assassination attempt, while still running against Biden, in the midst of a race that was beginning to seem like a foregone conclusion. Almost three weeks later and Vance has proved not only a divisive figure, but one who has opened up whole new avenues of both criticism and mockery from those who think little of the first-term Ohio Senator.

One meme circulated claimed (without any basis in fact) that Vance had, at one point, had sexual intercourse with a couch. This matter was compounded by the Associated Press publishing a factcheck titled “No, JD Vance did not have sex with a couch,” which they then took offline after saying it had not gone through their usual editorial procedure. Needless to say, this was welcomed with much glee by Vance’s opponents.

There was further laughter after an old tweet of Vance suggested that he had been searching the terms “woman” and “dolphin” together on Twitter.

Vance has also been pilloried for past statements relating to women and families, and having referred to certain Democrats such as Kamala Harris and Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez as “childless cat ladies” — an inaccurate statement in itself, as Harris has been a stepmother for over 10 years. He has also made statements suggesting that people with children should have more voting power than those who do not.

Even conservative commentators such as Ben Shapiro have turned on Vance. Discussing the prospective VP this week, Shapiro said: “If you had a time machine, if you go back two weeks, would he have picked JD Vance again? I doubt it.”

Harris’ ascension to the nomination (which is not technically confirmed just yet but, let’s face it) has upended the race in more ways than one. Since Biden dropped out and threw his endorsement her way, she raised a staggering $200m in donations and narrowed the polling gaps that had been widening between Trump and Biden. 

The former California senator has a perceived advantage with younger voters, women voters and voters of colour. She has also courted celebrity endorsements, including rapper Megan Thee Stallion who appeared at a Harris rally in the pivotal state of Georgia last night. Popstar Charli XCX also made headlines when she tweeted “kamala IS brat,” a potentially confusing statement depending on your level of pop culture exposure, explained in full here.

Trump’s lack of appeal to voters of colour was highlighted this week when he appeared onstage as a guest at the National Association of Black Journalists’ conference and made several false statements pertaining to Harris’ ethnicity.

“She was Indian all the way, and then all of a sudden she made a turn and she became a Black person,” Trump said, even though Harris attended a historically black college, joined a historically black sorority, and has always publicly identified as black. Trump also told the audience that immigrants were taking “black jobs” to disbelieving laughter and gasps. Asked to clarify what he meant by a “black job,” Trump said: “A black job is… anybody who has a job.”

With Harris at the top of the ticket, Democrats also now have an opportunity to be strategic with their own vice presidential pick. Some of the names on the shortlist include Senator Mark Kelly of Arizona and Pennsylvania governor Josh Shapiro, two crucial swing states in this year’s election. Other options include Pete Buttigieg, who is currently serving as Secretary of Transport, Andy Beshear, the popular Democrat governor of Kentucky – typically a hard red state, and Tim Walz, the avuncular governor of Minnesota who has led the charge on the new strategy of highlighting the weirdness of the Republican platform. Shapiro and Beshear are particularly popular in their home states.

Roy Cooper, the Democratic governor of North Caroline has recused himself from consideration, while Michigan governor Gretchen Whitmer has also indicated that she doesn’t want the job. 

At this point in the race, all of the momentum appears to be with Kamala Harris. Her next big move, however, is to pick her vice president. As JD Vance has already proven, the wrong choice can kill momentum dead in its tracks.