Walz’s ‘couch’ quip, and Democrats’ growing comfort in going low

One of the biggest dilemmas in politics is how much to avail yourself of the dark arts. You might think a tactic is morally wrong or underhanded. But what happens when you see your opponent getting some traction with such things? Do you emulate them (even halfway), in the name of leveling the playing field and defeating someone you believe is dangerous? If they tell blatant lies, for example, do you feel justified in stretching the truth? Do you conclude that failing to do so amounts to unilaterally disarming?

The Democratic Party has struggled with this throughout the Donald Trump era, as the former president and current presidential candidate has spouted tens of thousands of lies and falsehoods, myriad conspiracy theories about his opponents, and epithets aplenty. Michelle Obama’s recipe in 2016 was, “When they go low, we go high,” and she doubled down in 2020, even after that 2016 loss. But other high-profile Democrats — including 2016 runner-up Hillary Clinton herself — have differed somewhat.

“You cannot be civil with a political party that wants to destroy what you stand for, what you care about,” Clinton said in 2018, adding: “You can be civil, but you can’t overcome what they intend to do unless you win elections.”

“When they go low, we kick ’em,” former attorney general Eric Holder said, more bluntly, the same week. “That’s what this new Democratic Party is about.”

Vice President Kamala Harris’s 2024 campaign sent its strongest signal to date Tuesday night — but hardly its first — that it’s not interested in unilateral disarmament. It’s increasingly willing to go low, or at least lower.

In no less than his debut as Harris’s running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz (D), who emerged from a vetting process overseen by Holder, made a pointed reference to a false social media story about GOP vice-presidential nominee JD Vance. If you haven’t heard about it, the fake story deals with Vance supposedly having admitted to sexual relations with a couch. Three weeks ago, an X user posted a fake citation from Vance’s book, “Hillbilly Elegy,” and it’s been the subject of liberal jokes ever since.

“I can’t wait to debate the guy,” Walz said at a rally in Philadelphia. “That is, if he’s willing to get off the couch and show up.”

The crowd erupted at the apparent reference. And Walz quickly made clear it was intentional.

“You see what I did there?” he said.

Harris’s expression conveyed shock (whether real or feigned) at what her running mate had just said. But it’s not the first time the campaign has invoked a couch; it did so in a July 27 tweet that stated, “JD Vance does not couch his hatred for women.” And her campaign quickly promoted video of Walz’s comment, layering it on TikTok with the words, “omg Tim Walz WENT THERE” and “wait for it.” It’s evident this is something they’d like to promote.

A senior Harris adviser said that Walz’s “couch” comment was in his script, but not the “You see what I did there?” follow-up that drove home the intent.

The Trump campaign did not respond to a request for comment.

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.

Harris’s campaign has also taken to clipping video of Trump and Vance and posting to social media, while appending text that can mislead and sometimes obviously does.

Last week, the campaign posted a clip with the text, “Trump: Americans who don’t support me are animals. They are horrible people” — a comment that would be reminiscent of Clinton’s 2016 “basket of deplorables” comment. But Trump’s comments were actually about people who have tried to put him in prison, not all Americans who didn’t support him.

Another example: On Monday, Harris’s campaign posted a clip of Trump talking about Venezuela and its recent election. Its text read: “Trump: It’s being run by a dictator. And it’s very safe. It’s safer than many of our cities.”

The text gives the impression that Trump was again praising a dictator, in this case Nicolás Maduro. In fact, Trump didn’t so directly tie the “dictator” comment to the “very safe” comment. He spoke in between about the idea that criminals had left Venezuela and come to the United States and left the cities behind them safer.

This is a case-in-point for Democrats’ dilemma. The idea that criminal Venezuelans are coming to the United States in droves is itself baseless; it has been fact-checked accordingly. Yet Trump has used that idea regularly to attack Democrats’ border policies.

By that standard — and next to Trump’s historic falsehoods — misleadingly juxtaposing some words would seem a small offense. But it’s clearly a decision Democrats have made to play the game and to take more liberties in doing so.

Which brings us back to the couch.

Amid some criticism of the comment, Walz’s defenders have argued that the story is self-evidently a joke.

“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,” the senior Harris adviser said. This person spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss campaign strategy.

They’ve also noted that the campaign has gone after Trump and Vance on plenty of substance and policy, too, and that mining this territory pales in comparison with Trump’s bare-knuckle brand of politics.

The latter is certainly true. There is no comparison between the liberties Trump has taken in his political career and what Harris and Democrats are doing. Trump has called Barack Obama the “founder of ISIS,” promoted conspiracy theories including most notably about Obama’s birthplace, made racist comments about diverse political opponents, and accused his opponents of criminality based on nonsensical evidence. Twice in recent months, he has baselessly tied those who have run afoul of him to plots to assassinate him. He takes stuff like the couch story and does more than joke about it; he pitches it as fact.

There is a cost to the political process in going down this road. 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.”

And even shy of that, it’s just a bizarre, very online thing to elevate.

Michelle Obama, in her 2020 Democratic National Convention speech, reflected on disagreements in the party over her “we go high” mantra and how that had panned out for her party.

“My answer: Going high is the only thing that works, because when we go low, when we use those same tactics of degrading and dehumanizing others, we just become part of the ugly noise that’s drowning out everything else,” she said. “We degrade ourselves. We degrade the very causes for which we fight.”

Four years later, Democrats may be making a different calculation about what’s required to win.