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It’s weird. If you stop to think about it, world over, politicians, pundits, and pollsters tend to address the public in binaries. “The party is wrong/right.” “I have a better plan.” “She/he/they speak(s)for the people.” Follow this thread, and you’ll notice how rare it is to hear a shift from a dyadic structure to a triadic one.
Enter the United States Vice Presidential candidate, Tim Walz joining Kamala Harris on the Democratic ticket at just the moment when a total breakdown felt imminent. By contrast to the harrowing threat, issued from both sides of the aisle and in media of all stripes, that nothing less than democracy is at state, there was this:
You know there’s something wrong with people when they talk about freedom: freedom to be in your bedroom, freedom to be in your exam room, freedom to tell your kids what they can read. That stuff is weird.
By contrast to the flagrantly racist, identity-based attacks of the Trump/Vance ticket, Walz’s comments playfully invite the potential of a third, a way out of the doer/done-to (Benjamin, 2018) dynamics of politics-as-usual. “That’s weird” gestures toward a triadic space for reflection on stark values and policy differences – “calling in,” and recognizing the basic humanity of the public who might just be able to think about “weird” stuff after all.
The auspicious launch of the Harris/Walz campaign has injected a spark of joy into a campaign formerly filled with dread. True: Walz lapses into split complementarities when, for example, he claims Trump is “weird as hell.” But as much as we try to resist complementarities and splits, to veer away from reductive binaries, we all lapse into binaries as Benjamin writes, because recognition is only ever unevenly realized. Still: only a former high-school teacher could work this stroke of Winnicottian genius. Were Trump to reply, “I’m not weird, you are!,” even the most inveterate partisan would have no choice but to laugh. And this, just when potential space seemed all but be