But they also run like normal people running in return for people who are different, dangerous and, well, as Democrats have repeatedly emphasized in recent weeks, strange. One of the most striking things about this convention, in which virtually every speaker mentions the “joy” of the nominee, is that it has also been sharply partisan; refreshingly so in ways that Democrats have often been reluctant to demonstrate in recent years. This is a convention that attacks Donald Trump as a rich man who cares only about other rich people, and that rightly paints Republicans — not all of them, mind you, but many of them — as bent on undermining democracy, trampling on individual rights, all in the service of a small, strange, plutocratic elite. It’s a good message — and a different one than Democrats have pushed in the past.

“Donald Trump is, in many ways, an unserious man,” Harris said as she accepted the party’s presidential nomination on Thursday. “But the consequences of putting Donald Trump back in the White House are extremely serious.” She went on to list Trump’s post-election sins and crimes. “Imagine Donald Trump with no guardrails, and using the immense power of the presidency of the United States … to serve the only client he’s ever had: himself.” That was Harris’ message this week, and it’s an effective change of pace. Her speech attacked Trump, using her middle-class upbringing and relationship with her mother to argue that she would put the interests of the country above her own. Tim Walz did something similar, largely eschewing the “weird” talk in favor of his past as a high school football teacher and coach.

But the rest of the convention has been bare-knuckle. Even the notoriously bombastic Michelle Obama accused Trump of “getting small.” Speakers have led a rousing assault on Republican policy, particularly the Heritage Foundation-sponsored “Project 2025,” the proposed policy agenda for a second Trump term that the former president is now trying to escape. The convention has been a four-day broadside against Trump’s racism and misogyny and the Republican Party’s numerous attacks on individual liberties, particularly reproductive rights.