This week’s been less than optimal for several reasons. Taking the day off for some medical stuff that I’m stressed enough about left me with almost eighty emails to sort through this morning, and getting up at all this morning felt awful because yesterday felt at all times exactly like Saturday.

All that busy probably comes from the fact that I’m doing some filling in for the boss and the boss’s boss this week as they’re out on limited hours or leave, which is ideal, because so much about this week has been about rushing to prepare last-minute for the training symposium scheduled less than two weeks from now that was originally supposed to be in-person at a Florida conference center, then when there wasn’t money for travel, it became virtual or perhaps canceled, until all of a sudden there was money enough available to do it in-person again, for at least some people (not me, thank $diety). I’ve had to spend the week herding cats working with some less-than-easy folks rushing to prepare three or four hours of programming for the program management track, and the schedule keeps shifting every few hours.

Nothing like having to pull off miracles at the last minute, huh?

One team that seems to have managed it though is the Harris campaign, doing damned near everything right over the last couple of weeks, raising ridiculous amounts of money, and really sticking the landing on one of the most effective attack strategies the Democrats have come up with in recent memory:

Just calling them weird.

I mean, we’ve known this forever, but actually just going ahead and doing it has seriously thrown the opposition for a loop, and the article I linked above gives an excellent reason why:

Here’s why this line of attack is so effective as counterdisinformation. It runs on vibes rather than facts, which meets disinformation purveyors on their own turf with their own weapons and doesn’t give anyone details to get bogged down in.

Then it stakes a claim to normalcy, the same one that far-Right fascists crave and can never attain.

“Weird” suggests something other than normalcy; and to a political party that puts such value on conformity, it’s one of the worst things to be called.

TFG, his extra-weird running mate, and pretty much all the surrogates are unable to offer up anything but variations of “I know you are but what I am I” is that the one thing these narcissistic and fascist types truly crave is legitimacy and respect, and simply pointing out how weird and out of the mainstream they are, and rolling our collective eyes about it totally denies them that, and it drives them nuts.

Laugh at ’em, they hate that.

This election cycle has indeed been more about attitudes and “vibes” than about policy; it’s not been so much about what a candidate’s going to do upon election, but rather how a voter “feels” about some aspect of the candidate, be it age, attitude, or alleged opinions on furniture. Policy will be there, but the big concepts that have driven things are comfort with the candidates and polling concepts like “double-haters” and the aforementioned “vibes;” and for once, the Democratic camp has managed to find a way to gain the advantage.

I, for one, am here for it.

So, yeah…tunes. Lots of fun 80s and 80s-adjacent stuff, all of which generally feels good, which fits with the optimism so many of us are still feeling, at least in one particular aspect of our lives:

1. “2000 Man” – KISS
2. “School of Rock” – School of Rock cast
3. “LABOUR – the cacophony” – Paris Paloma
4. “Dead Girl Walking” – Jensen McRae
5. “Dancing with Myself” – Generation X
6. “Growing on Me” – The Darkness
7. “Head Over Heels” – The Go-Go’s
8. “You Might Think” – The Cars
9. “Angel of the Morning” – Juice Newton
10. “Better Thing” – The Romantics
11. “Stupid Boy” – Gear Daddies
12. “Rock You Up” – The Romantics
13. “Land of Canaan” – Indigo Girls
14. “Animal” – Def Leppard