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CHICAGO – Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz accepted the Democrats’ vice presidential nomination on Wednesday, capping off a night focused on “freedom” with a “pep talk” about beating the Trump-led GOP.
“When we Democrats talk about freedom, we mean the freedom to make a better life for yourself and the people that you love,” said Walz. “When Republicans use that word, they mean that the government should be free to invade your doctor’s office.”
Democrats had filled the United Center with talk of “freedom,” confident that they could re-cast their own agenda as the antithesis of abortion bans and social service cutbacks. Walz, who’d helped frame that message — and stuck the “weird” label to conservative Republicans — promised that a Harris administration would make life more affordable and government less meddlesome.
“While other states were banning books from our schools, we were banishing hunger from ours,” he said. After he described “praying” over the fertility treatments that helped him and wife Gwen Walz raise a family, his son Gus wept, jumped to his feet, and shouted: “That’s my dad!”
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Democrats spent a good part of the night re-introducing Walz, who’s awkwardly revised and clarified some of his quotes and record since joining the ticket even as polls suggest he’s made a positive first impression. The Minnesota governor had not always corrected people who claimed he’d served in Afghanistan; he’d retired from the National Guard before his unit was deployed to Iraq.
GOP vice presidential JD Vance, who deployed to Iraq as a Marines combat correspondent, had accused Walz of “stolen valor” and cowardice. In a Wednesday letter, Republican veterans in Congress wrote that Walz had disrespected “the real sacrifices made by veterans who did serve in combat.”
Walz’s colleagues pushed back from the DNC stage. Minnesota Sen. Amy Klobuchar called him a “a guy who has served in uniform,” and two Afghanistan veterans — Maryland Gov. Wes Moore and Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg — linked the Democratic ticket to their own service and, in Moore’s case, took a shot at Donald Trump’s “bone spurs” that kept him from going to Vietnam.
“My fellow veteran — my brother,” Moore said of Walz.
The convention also played up Walz’s teaching and coaching career. A video featured testimonials from his former students. Before the nominee walked on, former Mankato West High School football players ran onstage to the sounds of Stars and Stripes Forever, highlighting a part of his story that Republicans haven’t gone after.
“You can see him sitting down at Bob Evans,” said former Ohio Rep. Tim Ryan, who lost his state’s 2022 U.S. Senate race to Vance, but had previewed some of the attacks Democrats are landing on him now. “He’s a lot more likable than JD is. He’s not as angry. He’s upbeat. He’s not mean-spirited. He’s right out of central casting, a Midwest football coach.”
Other Democrats worked on the same themes, with different angles and energy levels. Bill Clinton veered completely off course from prepared remarks, praising the “courage and compassion” Joe Biden showed in bowing out of the presidential race.
“The only personal vanity I want to assert is that I’m still younger than Donald Trump,” said Clinton, 78 — a line Democrats couldn’t have used when Biden was leading their ticket. “The next time you hear him, don’t count the lies. Count the I’s.”
Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro, a runner-up in the vice presidential bake-up, had also been an innovator in the “freedom” re-brand. He put his own spin on it on Wednesday, promising “real freedom” if voters kept Democrats in power.
“It’s not freedom to tell our children what books they’re allowed to read. It’s not freedom to tell women what they can do with their bodies,” said Shapiro. “Hear me on this: It sure as hell isn’t freedom to say you can go vote, but he gets to pick the winner. That’s not freedom.”
Democrats also returned repeatedly to Project 2025, the Heritage Foundation handbook and staffing plan that Trump has unsuccessfully distanced himself from. (Vance wrote the foreword to Heritage Foundation President Kevin Roberts’s upcoming book, which was retitled and delayed until after the election after negative news coverage.)
Saturday Night Live star Kenan Thompson brought an economy-sized copy of the document onstage, flipping through it and telling on-screen voters how it would wreck their jobs and marriages if Trump got to implement it. Michigan Attorney Gen. Dana Nessel, the first gay woman to hold her office, warned that the GOP would have to “pry this wedding band from my cold, dead, gay hand” — and it wouldn’t work because she was “retaining a lot of water.”
David’s view
The Democrats’ “freedom” sales pitch is the result of copious polling and heat-tests in elections and TV debates. Buttigieg opened with a joke about how viewers “might recognize me from Fox News” before saying that his life as a married gay man “was literally impossible” last century, an example of the ways politics can still push the frontiers of liberty. But the whole party’s gotten traction from contrasting their social liberalism with the GOP’s conservatism — implemented, they said, through Donald Trump’s judges.
Republicans are frustrated that Walz’s actions in the COVID pandemic — school shutdowns and stay-at-home orders — haven’t undermined the “freedom” theme. They’ve also been surprised by Walz’s popularity, which has remained robust after two weeks of tough attacks on his life story.
TV interviews with ex-Guardsmen angry that Walz retired before they deployed, the Harris campaign quietly correcting Walz’s rank upon retirement, stories about him misleading reporters in Minnesota; none of this has stopped Walz from being popular right now, the most popular politician on either ticket. His party is most comfortable with the football part of his record, but confident overall that he’ll appeal to voters who consider some Democrats snobby or unrelatable.
The View From JD Vance
In an interview on CNN after Walz spoke, Vance rebutted the attacks on “Project 2025” and accused Democrats of deflecting from higher grocery prices and increased border crossings under the current administration.
“Because they can’t talk about Kamala Harris’s record they’re creating a phantom of Donald Trump’s leadership,” he said.
Notable
After being introduced as “mother of dragons” by host Mindy Kaling, former House speaker and veteran Democrat Nancy Pelosi began her speech by thanking the departing president she was widely credited with helping nudge from the race.
Oprah Winfrey delivered a primetime speech in her home city of Chicago, calling Harris “the best of America.” The appearance was a surprise, and Winfrey apparently used a face mask and hat to go incognito during rehearsals, so much so that Pelosi did not recognize her, Gayle King said on CBS News.