Search online for “J.D. Vance is weird,” and you’ll find dozens of commentators and media personalities spreading the news that yes, J. D. Vance is weird.

Some credit Minnesota Governor Tim Walz, who is now Kamala Harris’s running mate, with kicking off this campaign. On July 23, he appeared on the MSNBC Morning Joe show. “We do not like what has happened,” he said, “when you can’t even go to Thanksgiving dinner with your uncle because you end up in some weird fight that is unnecessary. Well, it’s true. These guys are just weird.” With help from the Democratic Governors Association, the word quickly became the go-to smack-down for Donald Trump, J.D. Vance, and their supporters.

Only a few who jumped on the weird bandwagon, including some in the corporate networks, bother to explain the label. Some cited Vance’s opposition to abortion. Some hens in the farmyard, riled up by his remark two years ago about “childless cat women” running the federal government, began clucking and flapping their wings in distress. But most of those who adopted this weird tag just throw it out there, hoping it will stick. 

And according to some observers, Republicans as well as Democrats, this bizarre tactic may be having its intended effect, turning some voters away from the Trump-Vance ticket.

My initial reaction to this bit of mudslinging was laughter.  It reminded me of that saying attributed to socialist Robert Owen, who said to a friend and fellow reformer, “All the world is queer save me and thee, and even thou art a little queer.” In other words, we’re all a bit weird.

Teenage girls also popped to my mind. After raising a daughter, keeping recent company with five teenage granddaughters, and teaching teens for some 20 years, I have countless times witnessed young women rolling their eyes and saying something along the lines of “Wow! That dude is weird!” Their description could apply to the math geek in their classroom or to a shirtless guy covered in tats on the street. Without further explanation, weird loses all meaning.

Consequently, if this tactic does indeed draw voters away from the Trump-Vance team, then my amusement turns to disdain. Any citizen of any political party who casts a ballot on so flimsy a premise is as thick as the bricks of the building in which I am writing these words.

And yet I suspect the Democrats are making a mistake here. In denigrating J.D. Vance as weird, they’re marking tens of millions of Americans who support him with the same stamp. Writer and former feminist Sasha Stone is one those people. In her article “JD Vance Is a Hero,” she explains her support for Vance: 

JD Vance is my hero because everything he’s done so far in life has not killed his faith in himself, his family, his mother, and his country. I would say in his God, but I don’t know if he is religious, and I would feel like a phony if I said it that way. I’m not quite there yet. I guess I just mean this life can take you down. If you can somehow survive it, it’s a miracle.

Donald Trump said JD Vance cares about family to explain away why he is adamant about supporting mothers with kids. You’d have to grow up the way he did and the way I did to understand why someone would be so protective of the family unit. He did not have it growing up, but it was something he longed for. I know that because I felt the same way.

Unmentioned in Stone’s piece are some of Vance’s other accomplishments. His boyhood and adolescence among the working class in rust-belt Ohio stand in stark contrast to the upbringing of both Donald Trump and Kamala Harris. After high school, he enlisted in the Marines, received an honorable discharge, earned his degree from Ohio State University, and graduated in 2013 from Yale Law School. Three years later, he published Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis, which became a bestseller, and was then made into a movie. In 2022, he won the Senate race in Ohio. Among other things, he was known on Capitol Hill for his opposition to funding the war in Ukraine, for his support of America’s working and middle classes, and for his family values. Oh, and by the way, J.D. Vance just celebrated his 40^th birthday on August 2, 2024.

If Vance’s record and achievements at so young an age constitute something weird, then let’s figure out a way to manufacture this magic potion and serve it up to every teenager in America.