The signature obsessions of Republican politics since 2020 - election denialism, book banning, abortion bans and the crusades against trans and other gender-nonconforming people - are either unpopular with most Americans or electoral dead weight.

Through all of this, Republicans still insist that they're the party of normalcy. This is why they can't quite deal with the charge that they're weird. There's a reason for this. For years, in the American political imagination, Republicans were the normal party and Democrats were the party of weirdness.

Democrats rarely tried to contest the notion that Republicans represented, in some sense, the mainstream of American society. The political press also took the idea that the Republican Party spoke to the so-called heartland of the United States for granted. Trump's surprise victory in the 2016 presidential election - on the strength of narrow margins in a handful of postindustrial swing states - only enhanced the sense that Republicans were still the party of a silent majority, even if they hadn't actually won a majority.

But a funny thing happened after Trump won. He purged the old-line Republicans and brought to prominence a new crop of far-right politicians, activists and media personalities who stood well outside the mainstream. In their minds, they're only fighting back against a domineering cultural left. But the truth is that Republicans are alienating a large part of the American public and they just don't see it.

And because they don't see it, they've given Democrats an opportunity to do what Nixon did: to make their party the party of the silent majority and to define Republicans as one of the worst things a party can be in modern American politics.

Weird.

She speaks to those crowds - and us at home - with prenatural poise and confidence for someone thrown into the lion's den at the 11th hour. She's more than articulate and intelligent, she's thoughtful and buoyant with an easy smile and a hearty laugh - hallmarks of someone comfortable in their own skin and fully cognizant of the task laid before her as she picked up the baton to finish the race for the presidency and to keep Donald Trump from further perverting our American experiment. She talks about a bright future to be built and shared by all of us, not one of carnage, fear, loathing and contempt for those who might be a little different. And she engenders hope, determination and most of all a joy not many of us felt three Sundays ago when Joe Biden stepped aside to let her pass to the top of the ticket.

Through all of this what I don't see is someone "dumb" or someone unprepared for the moment. In fact I see the opposite and a stark contrast to the diminished capacity of Donald Trump, leader of an insurrection and criminal convict awaiting sentencing for 34 felony convictions. According to Jamelle, the Republicans don't see these unmistakable contrasts either. Pray that a significant majority of voters see the leadership qualities in Harris and Walz while they steamroll Trump and myopic Republicans all across America on Election Day.

Here's an Arizona GOP border Mayor making the same case that Trump's Republican Party is NOT the mainstream, they're extremists obliviously gaslighting their followers.

'Obliviously' above, should be an adjective of 'followers' not gaslighting.