Tim Walz delivered an acceptance speech that checked all the political boxes. But he didn’t show much of the joy that he brought to the Democratic presidential ticket.
Democrats turned up the wattage at their convention Wednesday, rolling out celebrities including Stevie Wonder and Oprah Winfrey to vouch for Kamala Harris and poke at Donald Trump and his running mate, JD Vance.
But it was Harris’ vice presidential pick, Minnesota governor, former congressman, high school teacher and football coach Tim Walz, who was the star of Wednesday night’s program.
Columnists Anita Chabria and Mark Z. Barabak had these takeaways, and promise not to blitz you, the reader, with all kinds of gridiron metaphors.
Chabria: Wednesday was about Tim Walz sealing the deal on how the campaign wants voters to see him: Likable, responsible, kind and refreshingly ordinary. Basically the polar opposite to JD Vance.
Walz delivered on that, and more. Yes, his speech was short, but who among us faults a politician for keeping it brief? While more reserved than he’s been on the campaign trail (and in what looked like a new suit) he pounded home on a new and important political line — Trump supporters are not Trump, and they are not bad people.
Hillary Clinton famously stepped in it by saying at least half of Trump supporters could be placed in a “basket of deplorables.”
The second part of that quote was instantly lost into obscurity: “The racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamaphobic — you name it. And unfortunately there are people like that. And he has lifted them up.”
Harris-Walz aren’t going to make that mistake.
Walz debuted the new party line on how to think of everyday Trumpers: “That family down the road — they may not think like you do, they may not pray like you do, they may not love like you do, but they’re your neighbors. And you look out for them, and they look out for you.”
That sticks to a message of unity (disagreement over hate) while still leaving plenty of space to go after Trump and Vance both personally and on policy.
But for me, it was Gus, Walz’s 17-year-old son who has a nonverbal learning disorder, who brought home who this family and this man is. When Walz called his wife and kids his “entire world” from stage, Gus leaped up, clearly overcome, and yelled, “That’s my dad.”
I was done. But you had a different reaction to Walz, Mark?
Barabak: I thought Walz was fine.
He didn’t dazzle. There were no great rhetorical flights. He was workmanlike in that solid, flannel-shirt-wearing Midwestern Dad way of his.
Walz essentially had three jobs: Introduce himself to America after being plucked from relative obscurity. Make the case for the Democratic ticket.
