Instead Of Fact Checking MAGA, Democrats Have Moved On To Vibe Checking

If you’ve been paying any attention to the political news in the last week, you may have seen stories about couch fucking, or dolphin porn, or burnt monkey testicles, or even cat ladies. Or really just about any of the comments coming out of the Harris campaign, or from other Democratic supporters, calling out the fact that Donald Trump and running mate JD Vance are just fucking weird, man.

In the last week, there’s been a notable difference in the way the Democrats have campaigned against the Trumpist GOP, since Joe Biden dropped out of the 2024 Presidential election. The Democrats have not focused that much on debunking any of the many, many (many) falsehoods the Trump/Vance campaign spews. They haven’t even focused as heavily on the extreme policies the campaign is pushing (though, that’s a part of it).

Instead, they’ve leaned in deeply on just how fucking weird Trump and Vance and their core beliefs are. And, in many ways, this seems to be generating excitement, at least online, from Democrats who were kinda blah about Biden and his chances.

Of course, this kind of campaign-by-meme and focusing on mockery over policy was embraced by Donald Trump going back nearly a decade. It took forever for the Democrats to figure out a way to counter it. Trump’s entire argument against Democrats has been to constantly mock them and never engage seriously on policy. And it’s worked.

For years now, so many have insisted that the best way to respond to the Gish Gallop of Donald Trump is to try to actually debunk his many falsehoods. The emphasis on “fact-checking” everything has been an obsession of the media, though Republicans have turned fact-checking against the media.

I wrote eight years ago that fact-checking is mostly useless in convincing voters. As I wrote then, fact-checking often seems to reinforce and entrench opinions, rather than change them. Yet, so many Democrats (and media folks) seemed to think the way to deal with the non-stop flood of falsehoods from Republicans is to counter them with facts and policy ideas.

And, of course, those things have their place. But they suck as the main strategy for getting voters interested.

I’m reminded of a conversation I had long ago with Susan Benesch from the Dangerous Speech Project. She has spent many years studying so-called “dangerous speech,” which is speech that leads to real harm, as well as ways to counteract it. She pointed out that one strategy that is effective in some cases is mockery/humor as counterspeech. That’s not to say it’s the only strategy, but it’s often a useful one.

And it’s one that hasn’t really been used that much in response to Trumpism. Until now.

There’s just something powerful about taking back control over the framing. The MAGA world has moved the Overton window so much on certain issues. Perhaps the best way to make people understand this is to just shine a light on how fucking weird their positions are, and how out of touch they are with what most people actually believe.

Who knows if it will be effective in the long run. I have no sense about the political viability of it all. But at a first pass, it seems like it’s done an impressive job in reframing the debate away from this idea that Trumpworld are plotting to destroy everything (which feels unbelievable) to just: get a fucking load of what these dumbasses believe, and how incredibly dorky they are.

Already, Republicans are freaking out about it and trying to get the Democrats to stop calling them out on things like this. Hilariously, Vivek Ramaswamy is whining about it being “juvenile” and demanding that we get back to debating “policy.”

Dude, come on. None of us were born yesterday. The Trumpist GOP has been “dumb and juvenile” from the day Trump came down the escalator at Trump Tower and started raining down insults and condescending nicknames on all who disagreed with him. It’s all been insults and ad hominems.

I’m sure that there will be some adjustments and attempts to counter these arguments, but for the first time in eight years it feels like Democrats actually realized that the way to go after Trump is not to try to respond to all the nonsense, but to actually trust that people can recognize the nonsense.

It’s not about saying “and here are the reasons this is nonsense.” Instead, they are now saying “holy shit, did you see that same nonsense I did? I mean… really! Are these guys that wacko?”

It’s not a fact check. It’s a vibe check. Those dudes are spewing utter nonsense, and they seem kinda creepy and weird.

And so far, it’s working.