PHILADELPHIA — This so very odd race for the presidency, with November's election just 13 weeks away, finally settled all its players into place Tuesday. And it showed renewed signs of being the scrappiest of fights.
Vice President Kamala Harris, after naming Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz as her running mate Tuesday, traveled with him to this biggest city in critical, swing-state Pennsylvania and used all that to draw a clear distinction in contrast to the Republicans they hope to defeat on Nov. 5.
Walz was in his element amid a raucous rally crowd of about 14,000 supporters who have clearly embraced the Midwestern folksiness he faintly deploys while delivering haymaker insults. Harris brought Walz to Philadelphia to do what he has done best in his startling rise from little-known governor to contention as the second most powerful person on the planet.
He didn't disappoint, casting former President Donald Trump and his running mate, U.S. Sen. JD Vance of Ohio, as being so off-putting in their approach to politics and policy that they just sound "weird."
Get used to that word. Walz rode it all the way to the presidential ticket. You're going to hear a lot more of it for the next 2 1/2 months, especially because it clearly irks Trump and Vance but also because it leaves them dumbstruck in how to respond.
Harris used the bulk of her 30-minute remarks to cast Walz as an example of American middle-class exceptionalism, a Midwest farming background, service in the Army National Guard, work as a high school social studies teacher and football coach, a dozen years in Congress and two terms as governor.
Walz drilled down on the folksy candor that has won him so many new fans since he came under consideration as Harris’s running mate, offering this about Trump and Vance. “You know it, you feel it – these guys are creepy and, yes, just weird as........