Tim Walz formally accepts VP nomination at star-studded DNC as Bill Clinton, Oprah Winfrey back Harris

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Tim Walz aimed to tie progressive policies to Middle American values as he formally accepted his party’s vice-presidential nomination, capping a raucous penultimate evening of the Democratic National Convention that seemed designed to showcase a variety-show-like range of politicians and celebrities.

Appearing before the Minnesota governor in Chicago Wednesday was everyone from talk-show host Oprah Winfrey, aging party grandees Bill Clinton and Nancy Pelosi, to rising stars Pete Buttigieg and Josh Shapiro. The convention will conclude Thursday when Kamala Harris accepts the presidential nomination.

Musicians John Legend and Sheila E. performed Let’s Go Crazy by Minnesota native Prince to tee up Mr. Walz’s entrance.

Taking the stage surrounded by former high school football players he used to coach, Mr. Walz recounted growing up in rural Nebraska, serving in the National Guard, teaching social studies in small-town Minnesota and leading his team to a state championship. The lesson he drew from such tight-knit communities, he said, were the opposite of the anti-abortion culture-warring of his Republican rival, J.D. Vance.

“In Minnesota, we respect our neighbours and the choices they make,” he said. “We’ve got a golden rule: mind your own damn business.”

He highlighted his creation as governor of paid parental leave and school breakfast and lunch programs. “While other states were banning books from their schools, we were banishing hunger from ours,” he said. “You know what? Never underestimate a public school teacher.”

Mr. Walz also underlined both his lifelong enjoyment of hunting and his support for gun control. “I believe in the second amendment. But I also believe our first responsibility is to keep our kids safe,” he said.

In an emotional moment, he described how he and his wife, Gwen, used fertility treatments to conceive their two children, Hope and Gus, arguing that such procedures would be the next target of conservatives after abortion. Watching from the audience, a crying Gus jumped to his feet, pointed to his father and shouted “that’s my dad!” Added Mr. Walz: “Health care and housing are human rights.”

And he accused Donald Trump of planning to cut health care coverage and old age pensions, and banning abortion nationwide if he returns to office. “Is it weird? Absolutely,” he said of such an agenda, reprising the line that unexpectedly launched him last month into vice-presidential contention. “But it’s also wrong. And it’s dangerous.”

He closed with a final football analogy, telling the party faithful that their team was “down a field goal” in the fourth quarter but was on offence and had to “do the blocking and tackling” to help Ms. Harris win.

VP nominee Tim Walz aimed his words at the DNC squarely at Midwestern voters

If Mr. Walz’s pitch, which he has delivered for the last month on the campaign trail, was largely expected, the other star of the night was something of a surprise.

Ms. Winfrey was not included on the evening’s published agenda and, contrary to the anodyne appeal of the daytime television market she once dominated, she tied Republican policies to “sexism, racism and income inequality” before firing a broadside on abortion.

“If you do not have autonomy over this,” she said, gesturing to her body, “if you cannot control when and how you choose to bring your children into this world and how they are raised and supported, there is no American dream.”

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She also jabbed at Mr. Vance’s derision of childless people as “cat ladies” unfit for leadership.

“When a house is on fire, we don’t ask about the homeowner’s race or religion. We don’t wonder who their partner is or how they voted. No, we just try to do the best we can to save them. And if the place happens to belong to a childless cat lady – well, we try to get that cat out too,” she said.

And she led the hall in chants and cheers and nearly drowned out her words as she called on the country to “choose the sweet promise of tomorrow over the bitter return to yesterday – we won’t go back.”

Mr. Buttigieg, meanwhile, said Mr. Trump and Mr. Vance are pushing “darkness” with a campaign that resembles “a rerun of some TV wrestling death match.” He then recounted a domestic scene with his husband and their two three-year-olds as a living illustration of the country’s progress.

“This kind of life went from impossible to possible. From possible to real. From real to almost ordinary. In less than half a lifetime,” he said.

Obamas energize second night of DNC, endorsing Kamala Harris while warning of tight race ahead

The Transportation Secretary, who relocated in recent years to his husband’s home state of Michigan, a key swing state, predicted that voters will “end Trump’s politics of darkness once and for all.”

Mr. Clinton brought his usual folksy, improvisational style as he aimed to translate policy into relatable terms for moderate voters. He appeared to ad-lib most of his speech – at one point, the DNC’s teleprompter operators simply stopped attempting to keep up with his digressions and stopped scrolling.

“In 2024 we got a pretty clear choice it seems to me. Kamala Harris, for the people. And the other guy, who has proved even more than the first go-around that he is about me, myself and I,” the former president said. “I know which one I like better for our country.”

Mr. Clinton also offered something of a warning to Democrats about the risk of losing by exacerbating the country’s political polarization.

“I urge you to talk to all of your neighbours. I urge you to meet people where they are. I urge you not to demean them, but not to pretend you don’t disagree with them if you do. Treat them with respect, just the way you’d like them to treat you,” he said.

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While the former president has been a convention mainstay for the last three decades, his presence this time appeared to be a risk/reward calculation for the party.

Democrats today have largely moved on from the policies he embraced as president, such as cutting the country’s social safety net and embracing big business, and retrospective views of his extramarital affair with a White House intern have become increasingly critical. But his ability to reach centrists overrode any such concerns.

Ms. Pelosi, the former House Speaker and other veteran headliner, took a more dour approach, exhorting the country to “reject autocracy and choose democracy.”

Mr. Shapiro, the Pennsylvania governor touted, along with Mr. Buttigieg, as a potential future presidential candidate, said Mr. Trump’s idea of freedom is “freedom to tell our children what books they’re’ allowed to read” and “to say ‘you can go vote,’ but he gets to pick the winner.”

Democrats made full use of their advantage among entertainers, with a musical performance by Stevie Wonder, a sketch with comedian Kenan Thompson, a recitation from poet Amanda Gorman and several segments hosted by actor Mindy Kaling.

The central aim of the night was to introduce Mr. Walz to voters given his sudden emergence on the national stage following Ms. Harris’s ascension to the nomination last month. Already, his political tone has helped shape her campaign, with the “weird” epithet and other humorous jabs signalling a shift from the more earnest rhetoric of President Joe Biden to a more mocking style of attack.

It appears to have rattled Mr. Trump, who has repeatedly denied being weird but has struggled to come up with a response. In a press release, Mr. Trump’s campaign tried to brand Mr. Walz as a “radical left lunatic” and tried out a new epithet, dubbing him “freakish.”

The Republicans have also taken aim at Mr. Walz’s military record, accusing him of inflating his rank and incorrectly leading people to believe he had seen combat when he had not.

Earlier in the evening, the DNC continued the parade of Republicans pleading with members of their own party to vote for Ms. Harris to stop what they said was the danger of Mr. Trump’s authoritarian tendencies.

Geoff Duncan, a former Georgia lieutenant-governor who faced death threats from fellow Republicans for refusing to go along with Mr. Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election, said the former president was “willing to lie, cheat and steal” in those efforts.

“Trump was a direct threat to democracy and his actions disqualified him from ever, ever, ever stepping foot into the Oval Office again,” he said. “Our party acts more like a cult, a cult worshipping a felonious thug.”

Olivia Troye, who served as a national security adviser to Mike Pence, Mr. Trump’s vice-president, said that as the Latina daughter of a Mexican immigrant, “being inside Trump’s White House was terrifying.”

“What keeps me up at night is what will happen if he gets back there. The guardrails are gone,” she said. Republicans voting for Ms. Harris, she said, “you aren’t voting for a Democrat, you’re voting for democracy.”

The convention also invoked the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the U.S. Capitol by Mr. Trump’s supporters. Sergeant Aquilino Gonell, a former Capitol Police officer who was there that day, told the convention that Mr. Trump “summoned our attackers. Incited them. He betrayed us.”

In a sombre homage to bloodshed in the Middle East, the parents of Hersh Goldberg-Polin, a 23-year-old American who is among the hostages in Gaza, begged for his release. “There is a surplus of agony on all sides of the tragic conflict in the Middle East,” said Jon Polin. “In a competition of pain, there are no winners.”

Demands to bring home hostages held by Hamas are a humanitarian matter rather than a political one, he argued. It has been the difficult issue for the party as pro-Palestinian activists have criticized Mr. Biden and other party leaders for their support of Israel.