TL;DR: calling fascists weird was and is EXTREMELY effective messaging and pivoting away from it was probably one of the top reasons for Trump being able to infest the white house again.

I think Tim Waltz figured it out and then the Harris campaign shut him down

100%. Without a shadow of a doubt. Never underestimate the ability of the DNC to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory in order to please the owner donors and/or uphold arbitrary institutional norms.

The whether or not it works or not I'm not sure.

It ABSOLUTELY worked. Harris/Walz were far ahead in the polls while they were still calling weirdos weird and then they nosedived when they switched from that to the 1992 playbook.

The Trump messaging works by convincing people that the fascists are the only normal ones/the in group in a world taken over by abnormal and immoral people of the out groups

Even SUGGESTING that they might be just another out group rather than the only in group weakens the "everything our Dear Leaders say or do is correct because it's against the weirdos" narrative and more importantly the feeling of belonging and of being on the right side of history that the leaders of the cult have instilled in the followers.

Regular people have no problem being called weird (in fact, a lot of us actively celebrate our weirdness), but a fascist movement simply falls apart without the solid conviction that they're the only sane and normal ones.

This went a little longer than I intended, so I'll add a TL;DR at the top lol