those are all good points, i'd add that deplorable also has a level of moral judgment to it that weird doesn't and the media balked at hillary saying that trump supporters were bad people. also "weird" is targeting vance and trump specifically instead of just their supporters. i also think that "deplorable" was easy to reclaim for trump supporters in a way that "weird" can't be. 8+ years of terrible thanksgivings and annoying coworkers/customers/strangers etc also primed non-trump supporters to view them as "weird", you can only hear about litter boxes in schools and tom hanks being executed in gitmo so many times before you are willing to just brush off anything they say as deranged and, well, weird

"deplorable" is a norman word, "weird" is an anglo-saxon word

germanic root words hit the anglosphere brainstem

simple as

She called "half" of his supporters a "basket of deplorables" which is a lot less targeted than calling the candidates themselves weird.

Its literally just because Hillary Clinton sucks so hard and people didnt want to hear that shit from her

This one has a lot of weight behind it. She's just that unbearable except to the most brunchy of brunch liberals.

Deplorables is too much of a vocabulary word, weird is a word everyone knows. So deplorable just comes off more elitist, from a woman who is already seen that way. To quote a friend I asked "I think deplorable has a negative connotation that speaks to core personhood, in a way that comes off as both mean spirited and elitist"

Speaking as a former educator, I think this one also has significant weight. Using "big words" among the cool/bully crowd is like a beacon for bullying for the rest of that school year. It fucking sucks, but there wasn't too much I can do about it, except sometimes using the "big word" myself multiple times after I know what it is sometimes diluted the distinction and directed some of the groaning towards me instead of the bullied kid (I'd rather take groans than have some kid get tormented for standing out too much).

Kamala and especially Walz are better representations of "not weird" than Hillary was a representation of "not deplorable".

This one's powerful. I subscribe to this one. As vile as Harris/Walz can be, they're certainly less creepy than the old bunch.

People who are tired of Democrats being respectful like weird a lot

I'm not a Democrat and I still feel this one, even if I'm worried about "weird" people getting marginalized and bullied for being "weird" in ways that have nothing to do with Christofascist police states or billionaire vampire bloodboy coup attempts.

Chuds revel in being evil. Calling them villains or bad guys or saying they're a disgrace will have no effect. "Clever" whedonesque comebacks never work because they're dork shit. You just sound like an elementary school nerd in a crappy TV show trying to outsmart a bully. It never works, even in media.

Calling them creepy freaks works for the same reason it worked in elementary school. It others them and identifies their views as abnormal and fringe. A huge aspect of their ideology is the false belief that they and their beliefs are normal, that they are the bulwark of normalcy fighting against people who want to do strange and unnatural things. Slapping them with a straight-up dismissal of them and their views with a refusal to engage shuts them down entirely.

I think that is over thinking it. Republicans don't mind being deplorable. There is a kind of virtue there. Being hated is a kind of respect.

Republicans are conservative, so they are specifically against being weird. to call them weird is to use a weapon they are weak to. It is just resonant emotionally

Clinton was speaking about the supporters and not the leaders. So I’d agree with you that she came off as a snobby out of touch elite who didn’t like the unwashed masses.

There’s also the thing about the conservatives trying to wear the mantle of “silent majority” that calling conservative leadership and talking heads weird seems to be sticking.

It might also be a good way to sidestep getting sucked into a debate bro situation. It’s up to the other person to not be weird, you don’t have to supply a logical argument why somebody else is weird.

I figure whats gonna happen is Dems'll never get what made "weird" work. It's not the word itself it's the dismissal without disdain. "Weird" is different than normal. "Normal" is what fascists claim to be. Is you call them weirdos it ruins their argument, since part of the whole populism thing means they have be seen as normal before they can denounce "the other"

"Deplorable" is as OP says, elitist. Anyone with chops can discount "deplorable" by singin' "friends in low places" and get right back to vilifying "the other".

But i don't think they'll ever get that. I think they'll lean on "weird" until it's lost it's meaning. My personal guess as to why? They actually are elitist so they don't get the difference.

Deplorable is a weird word and not just because it's a big word

How many of you honestly think to yourselves "that's deplorable" when you hear about something terrible? I don't know about the rest of you but when I find out a cop murdered another person or about some nazi shit or about some nonce shit or something like that, my first thoughts are "that's disgusting" not "that's deplorable"

Deplorable is an attack yes but it's a weak attack, it's an old timey word that has been relegated to academia and devoid of any emotion behind it

Someone calling something or someone deplorable just has no bite to it because you can tell that the person using the word doesn't actually care about the thing they're talking about

If Hillary actually hated Trump supporters even half as much as I do she'd have called them disgusting hogs because that's what they are

"Deplorable" is the kind of word you use to describe out-there behavior that clearly crosses some sort of line. Some guy in the checkout line talking too loud about Trump isn't deplorable, but he is weird. Deplorable would be chanting "Jews will not replace us".

If you ignore belief, ignore what people say and only look at what they do; then most people who vote republican live functionally identical lives to people who vote democrat. Most of them won't go to a rally in Charlottesville or the capital (that's your outliers, people really plugged-in and feeling strongly about spectacle-politics), but they will have slightly weird answer if you asked them about it. "Weird" describes more of them than "deplorable" ever could.

Instead of "this is a sign of the rising tide of fascism" or "a threat to our democracy" or whatever, "weird" is a more general thing that speaks to whatever the listener is attuned to but generally understands as the off-putting wrongness of these Republican ghouls. It helps that Democrats have finally (by virtue of sidestepping any sort of primary election for their candidate) put Blank Slate Generic Candidate at the top of their Presidential ticket.

Also nobody was interested in hearing Hillary Dang Clinton talking down about any part of the electorate. It reinforced her elitist image in a way that all the attack ads in the world could only wish to do

deplorables has too many syllables

Deplorables would have worked fine with the young people who can vote now but couldnt in 2008.

I don't think Deplorables even works now. It's unclear what it refers to.

With weird, anyone can instantly think of a million weird things the republicans are doing at any moment.

Let's put it this way: I'm a very smart person, and I can't give a specific definition for Deplorable. I can't even think of easy examples. The first thing that comes to mind is Jews in the Holocaust. It's so complex that to most people it really just means bad. It failed because nobody fucking knows what it means.

Any insult that the average electorate has to Google the definition of, isn't gonna stick.