A scripted joke about Sen. J.D. Vance and couches made by Gov. Tim Walz (D-MN) at his coming out rally in Philadelphia earlier this week was a warning shot to the campaign of Donald Trump that Democrats will not be playing nice this election.
That is the opinion of Washington Post political analyst Aaron Blake who wrote that the people running Vice President Kamala Harris' presidential campaign have shelved Michelle Obama's advice on dealing with Republicans, "When they go low, we go high.”
Case in point, he notes, was the moment the newly anointed vice presidential candidate Walz played word games with J.D. Vance's name and a couch — slyly playing on a fake social media story about the Ohio Republican engaging in youthful sexual escapades with furniture.
During his Tuesday speech, Walz quipped, “I can’t wait to debate the guy. That is, if he’s willing to get off the couch and show up," before quickly adding, "You see what I did there?”
According to Blake, the Democratic Party has struggled with insults, lies and smears during the Trump era and the Vance/couch joke is the "strongest signal" times have changed.
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"The backdrop of all of it, of course, is the increasing Democratic and Harris campaign efforts to label Vance and Trump as 'weird.' That middle-school-cafeteria-esque dig quickly sprouted as the top Democratic talking point in recent weeks after Walz seeded and fertilized it," the Post columnist suggested.
Explaining the change in attitude, a senior Harris adviser said, "We are not so self-important and humorless that we can’t acknowledge something that cuts through popular culture the way this meme did — in a joking way."
"There is a cost to the political process in going down this road," Blake warned.
"History suggests that plenty of people who don’t care to check the story out will come to believe it’s real. And you could be forgiven for thinking, cynically, that Democrats would be okay with that. After all, it epitomizes the idea that Vance is 'weird."
He added, "Democrats may be making a different calculation about what’s required to win."
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