Before the rally, Kaine visited a furniture factory in nearby High Point, where he managed to get in his requisite daily instance of publicly speaking Spanish, as the AP reported.

Kaine, it’s been said, is not an especially dynamic speaker, at least in English. Based on Tuesday’s performance, that’s a fair assessment—but Kaine isn’t an especially bad speaker, either. After several days of bluster, chaos, and belligerence on the Republican side of the campaign, a calm, paternal demeanor might appeal to voters. It’s also well-suited to the material of an economics speech. You can only make infrastructure, manufacturing, paid family leave, and debt-free college so exciting, no matter how worthy you think those policies are, and Kaine plowed through the material, casually riffing on his father’s experience as a small-business owner with a iron-working shop and dropping in the occasional joke. No, they weren’t great; yes, they lightened the mood.

In the first part of his speech, Kaine was Mr. Sunny. “Did anyone watch that convention? It was upbeat. It was positive. It was patriotic,” he said. “Without sugarcoating any challenge or whitewashing any of the issues we have to deal with, we Democrats showed that we’re upbeat, candid people.” He contrasted that with the Republican National Convention, which he described as having a “dark, depressing, Gotham City vibe.”

Kaine talked about how pleased he was to be on the ticket with Clinton—remembering the exact time that she called him to offer the job, 7:32 p.m. (“But who’s counting?”) “How many strong women have stood up in support of me in my 22 years in political life?” Kaine said. “I have benefited because strong women have been able to stand up and say, ‘I’m going to support you.’ This election gives the strong men in America a chance to stand up in support of strong women.”

In the second half of his remarks, however, Kaine turned his attention to Donald Trump. Another advantage of a dad-like demeanor is being able to play the attack dog without coming across as quite so churlish or harsh. Kaine made Trump’s frequent use of “believe me” into a motif. “Does anyone in this room believe Donald Trump? Does anyone think that maybe there’s something a little bit funny on those tax returns?” he asked. He assailed Trump for stiffing contractors who ran small businesses and students who attended Trump University. “We cannot afford to believe Donald Trump. Not one word!” Kaine said, setting off a chant from the energetic grandstand behind him.

Whatever Kaine brings in low-key demeanor and affability, he doesn’t bring much in terms of name recognition or familiarity. A crowd of around 500 people showed up at midday to see him, but not all of them had a good read on him yet. One man in line ahead of the rally told me several times that he was excited to see “Tim McKaine” speak. Another man, Bob Harrison, had driven up from Charlotte with a secret plan he hoped to hand off to Kaine on how to win Ohio and with it the election. He wouldn’t share it with me, since it would no longer be secret, and also in case I was a Trump plant. (The last part was, I believe, semi-joking.) Dave Clifford, a Bernie Sanders fan who said he was “not convinced yet” had come to see Kaine because he was curious and happened to free Tuesday afternoon. Another Bernie fan was there on a mission, and he briefly heckled Kaine during his speech for “election fraud” by his ticket mate.