Tim Walz formally accepts VP nomination as Bill Clinton backs ...

Democratic vice presidential candidate Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz waves to the crowd during the Democratic National Convention on Wednesday, Aug. 21, 2024, in Chicago.Erin Hooley/The Associated Press

Tim Walz formally accepted the Democratic vice-presidential nomination Wednesday evening as the party looks to introduce voters to the Minnesota Governor unexpectedly pulled onto the ticket last month.

Mr. Walz’s speech on the second to last night of the Democratic National Convention – 24 hours before Vice-President Kamala Harris’s culminating address Thursday – capped a grab bag of other speakers representing the party’s past and, potentially, future.

The roster included former president Bill Clinton, former House of Representatives speaker Nancy Pelosi, Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg and Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro.

Mr. Clinton, who has a track record of folksy, explanatory convention speeches designed to woo moderate voters, was scheduled to jab former president Donald Trump, Ms. Harris’s Republican rival.

“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,” Mr. Clinton said. “I know which one I like better for our country.”

Mr. Clinton, who has in previous conventions spoken for over an hour with lengthy improvisations, was also expected to highlight the joyous persona Ms. Harris has projected since stepping in as the Democratic nominee last month.

“Even on the darkest days [as president], if you tried hard enough, there was always something good you could do for somebody else,” he said. “Kamala Harris is the only candidate in this race who has the vision, the experience, the temperament, the will and, yes, the sheer joy to get something done.”

Mr. Clinton’s presence at the convention seemed to represent something of a risk/reward calculation for the party.

Democrats today have largely moved on from the sort of policies Mr. Clinton 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 presence topped a lineup heavy on white, centrist figures, including potential future presidential aspirants Mr. Buttigieg and Mr. Shapiro, in a nod to the sort of voters the the party may be hoping Mr. Walz can attract.

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Mr. Buttigieg described the campaign of Mr. Trump and his running mate, J.D. Vance, as one of “darkness” and a “TV wrestling death match,” according to text of his speech.

“I just don’t think America is in the market for more darkness right now,” he was scheduled to say. After describing scenes from his domestic life with his husband and their two young children, Mr. Buttigieg would extol the “politics of hope” that allowed such advances in LGBTQ rights. “This kind of life went from impossible to possible, from possible to real, from real to almost ordinary, in less than half a lifetime,” his speech read. “Choose a better politics, one of hope, of promise, of freedom, of trust.”

Mr. Walz has played up his Middle American biography as a hunter, and former high school football coach and National Guard sergeant. On the campaign trail, the party often refers to him as “Coach Walz.”

He rocketed to the top of Ms. Harris’s vice-presidential shortlist after characterizing Mr. Trump and Mr. Vance as “weird” in a television interview.

The epithet, which the Democrats have sought to make the primary tag for their Republican opponents, appears to have rattled Mr. Trump, who has repeatedly denied being weird but has struggled to come up with a response. It also signalled a shift from the earnest rhetoric of President Joe Biden to a more mocking style of attack.

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 his military record, accusing him of inflating his rank and incorrectly leading people to believe he had seen combat when he had not.

Other DNC speakers Wednesday picked up on Mr. Walz’s rhetoric and tone.

Colorado Governor Jared Polis laced into Republicans for opposing abortion rights and into Project 2025, a policy plan by the conservative Heritage Foundation, for saying that only heterosexual couples should have children.

The GOP, he said, are “weirdos telling people who can and can’t have kids” and want to “control our reproductive and personal choices.”

Michigan Attorney-General Dana Nessel declared: “You can pry this wedding ring from my cold, dead, gay hands.”

The party also 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.