Tim Walz is the kind of guy Democrats have long needed on the national ticket. Fairly or not, they’ve long been perceived as coastal elitists who can’t emotionally connect with flyover country – but here’s this two-fisted pep-talking plain-speaking duck-hunting neighbor-helping school-teaching pigskin-loving flannel-wearing hunk of homespun Americana, and it’s no wonder the delegates went wild at the climax of Night Three. They know what they’ve got.

Maybe it’s too soon to write that the Walz are closing in on Trump and his cultists; for now, I’ll simply point out that Kamala Harris’ running mate is the stuff of MAGA nightmares: A salt-of-the-earth heartland everyman who can tell you whether a three-quarter-inch PVC pipe is the right size for you.

So it’s no surprise that the MAGAts have been frantically trying to tear Walz down – witness the smears of his 24 years in the National Guard, the blatant lie that he has stocked tampons in Minnesota schoolboys’ bathrooms, the blatant lie that he redesigned the Minnesota flag to look like Somalia’s, etcetera – because they’re rightly terrified that he will help Harris nail down the crucial “blue wall” states of Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin. (Most terrified of all is Trump, who phoned into Fox News this morning to say that Walz has been a “terrible governor” – which is funny, because in 2019, when Trump named new appointees to the Council of Governors, a panel that advises the feds on security issues, one of the governors he chose was…Tim Walz.)

When Harris gave Walz the nod, lots of pundits fussed over his ideological credentials or lack thereof – was he too progressive for the ticket or not progressive enough? – but that’s not the way most persuadable voters think. They want to know whether a candidate is a real person with real lived experiences, someone they can viscerally bond with. And given the centrality of football in popular culture, Walz should have no problem boosting his relatability rating. Indeed, his short blunt convention speech was packed with Knute Rockne rah-rah. Even his pointed reference to Project 2025, MAGA’s fascist blueprint, was framed in the language of the locker room:

“Some folks just don’t understand what it takes to be a good neighbor. Take Donald Trump and JD Vance. Their Project 2025 will make things much, much harder for people who are just trying to live their lives. They spend a lot of time pretending they know nothing about this. But look, I coached high school football long enough to know, and trust me on this: When somebody takes the time to draw up a playbook, they’re going to use it.”

And soon after, the rah-rah:

“You might not know it, but I haven’t given a lot of big speeches like this. But I have given a lot of pep talks. So let me finish with this, team. It’s the fourth quarter! We’re down a field goal! But we’re on offense and we’ve got the ball! We’re driving down the field!…Look, we’ve got 76 days. That’s nothing. There’ll be time to sleep when you’re dead! We’re going to leave it on the field! That’s how we’ll keep moving forward!”

Not so long ago, Democrats would’ve dismissed that kind of rhetoric as insufferably corny. Now they know it’s an asset. They’re working to position themselves squarely in the electoral center, at a dire historic moment when everything about democracy is on the line, and it certainly didn’t hurt when Gus Walz sprang to his feet and yelled “That’s my dad!” If Kamala wins this election, Tim may be America’s as well.