From the first time he said it, I wasn’t happy with Tim Walz’ describing Donald Trump and JD Vance as weird. Weird is not necessarily a bad thing, you know. You don’t want your leaders to be ordinary. And sometimes, isn’t weird a complement? Keep Austin Weird! They wear that with pride don’t they?

Frankly, I would be happier if he had said that Trump and Vance were “just plain crazy” or that they were “just plain nuts”. But he didn’t, although it would have described them better. Been more accurate. And, perhaps generated even a stronger reaction.

As Trump seems to be imploding, I have a theory. That is, that if you once supported Trump and you turn away from him, you can’t go back again. You see the emperor without the clothes, and you are embarrassed you didn’t see him that way before. At least, I hope that will be the case.

But – and this is true as well – Harris has to be able to pull it off. And Tim Walz can talk about only 80-some odd days, and “we can sleep when we’re dead”, but wishing does not make it so. Hard work, energy, knowing your message and sticking to it, and being able to respond quickly to new circumstances. If Harris and Walz can do this, they will be shoe-ins.

Next week is the Democratic convention, four (?) televised nights. For those of us who remember 1968, we remember Democrats and Chicago as a volatile mix. Riots and noise, on and off the floor, and a Democratic loss to Richard Nixon. Chicago doesn’t have a fiery Richard Daly as mayor any more and, within the party hierarchy, opposing voices have been moderated, but Democrats are Democrats and – to quote Mr Walz – sometimes things can get a bit weird. I hope that none of that happens.

Because if it doesn’t, Harris will get a bump which will give her, at least temporarily (although if my theory is correct, permanently) a bump of a few points that could make the difference.

She has many things going for her, including her gifted oratory and her general appeal. She also has the ability, because of her background, to bring in large numbers of voters who might otherwise stay home. First, of course is Black women. Black women can be a very determined group, you know, and they can influence not only each other, but they can influence Black 18-30 year olds, and they can influence Black men, and they can influence Black seniors, for whom voting might just be too much of a chore. Combine Black women with Black pastors, and everyone will come out and vote, to be sure.

And then there are women in general. Hillary Clinton, for reasons I myself cannot understand still, was not able to generate sufficient female excitement, although she would have been the first female president and was, if anything, over qualified for the job. She came close (since she won by several million votes – but that’s another story), but she couldn’t carry the battleground states, the states where, as the saying goes: the cities are Democratic, but the rest of the state is Alabama.

But things have changed. For one thing, the overturning of Rowe has lit a fire in supporters of women’s right to choose and women’s health, that was not necessary to demonstrate before. For another, women now have had the experience of seeing a favored female candidate lose – and they aren’t going to want to lose again; they will come out and vote.

The fact that Harris is relatively young (compared to Old Donald) is important, and the fact that she can relate to younger people is important. She needs to bring out the young vote. This can be tricky, since so many young voters (like young voters were in the 1960s) anti-war, and support of Israel is a policy that no American candidate is going to change. So, she needs to be careful here. She needs to be able to say things that no faction will fully agree with, but which won’t seem to outlandish to them that they will turn against her.

And she needs to appeal to Latinos, and I am sure there will be a major effort to do this, again tricky, because of the complications at the border. But, a triple “minority” (I know this is not the right term here, but you know what I mean), a woman, a Black, an Asian, has to appeal to another minority group, like the Latinos/as. We will see. Verdict still out. But I am confident. After all, Trump is weird.

But of course there is the albatross on Harris’ back – otherwise known as Joe Biden. I am not being critical of Biden as president, but he is an albatross, and it is very difficult for a sitting vice president to run for the presidency as an agent of change, to separate herself from her administration’s more controversial provisions, yet remain loyal and respectful. I am glad I don’t have to navigate this one.

And then there’s the “brat” question. Of course, I had never heard the term or used it in today’s context, but I did look it up. To be brat is to, as I understand it, enjoy life, visibly enjoy life, even the parts that – to an outsider – don’t look so enjoyable. So far, Kamala Harris is very brat. So is Tim Walz. I hope that continues.

Right now, everything seems like it’s on the right course. There will be big hiccups, of course, there always are. When there are hiccups, any quality of being brat that I otherwise have, I lose. (I guess that means I am not brat at all.) But I hope that Harris and Walz don’t. But you never know. Things can happen. We almost lost one candidate to an assassin’s bullet; it could happen again, but worse. Illness can strike when you least expect it. The international situation is so fraught that we could find ourselves involved in who knows what, just at the wrong time. Natural disaster can strike to throw everyone off balance.

American presidential campaigns have been lucky over the past 200+ years that catastrophes have not struck us during presidential elections. But that was then and this is now, and like good Boy Scouts (sorry, and like good Scouts), we must be prepared.

And yes, I am sure Kamala Harris and Tim Walz are not perfect. They will have a lot thrown at them. She will have a lot of her earlier actions and positions (many of which have changed) to explain. What does she really think of fracking in Pennsylvania, what will her policy be? Does she really agree with Trump that there should be no taxes in tips (something that seemed out of the questions until – when – the day before yesterday?). And so forth. And she will have to be able to respond successfully, although I do think that criticisms that come from Trump have less weight than they used to, and more weight than they should.

And Trump. Is he weird? Maybe not more than the rest of us. But is he crazy, is he nuts, is he deranged, is he too old? Those are the questions that the Harris campaign must answer. Because once you answer these questions the right way, you just can’t go back. Not only “we won’t go back”, but “they can’t go back”.