Here is what I said about Tim Kaine when he was just one of several names being floated as a running mate for Hillary Clinton. Here is what I said about Virginia being a very important state for blocking Trump’s stated Electoral College strategy.
My immediate take is that Clinton just took the heat of this election down a notch. She didn’t look to polarize it further by picking a liberal firebrand or try to win some demographic arms war by responding to Trump’s anti-Latino legions with a Latino running mate. She didn’t pick someone who can throw bombs with Trump, like Al Franken.
She went with steady, likable, qualified, compatible, and uncontroversial. Kaine can tick off a lot of boxes, too. He has the unusual ability to disarm detractors with his faith. His religiosity invites people in without putting them off. He’s bilingual and fluent in Spanish, and he has experience living in Honduras as a missionary. He’s well-liked by both labor unions and business interests, making it just a little easier for Clinton to capture the monied interests from Donald Trump at minimal cost with her base or as the cost of winning their support. He has more executive experience (as a mayor, lieutenant governor, governor, and head of the DNC) than any of the names that made it onto Clinton’s short list. He’s extremely well-liked and respected by his Republican colleagues in the Senate.
Trying to count the ways I hate @timkaine. Drawing a blank. Congrats to a good man and a good friend.
— Jeff Flake (@JeffFlake) July 23, 2016
He’s popular in his home state, too. He has never lost an election.
Naturally, people will nitpick him. He isn’t from the left fringe of the party, and he’s probably temperamentally moderate by nature. He didn’t win all those elections in Republican-leaning Virginia by letting his liberal freak flag fly. He represents an extremely pro-business, pro-military state that until five minutes ago was culturally conservative to the core.
His record is full of minor (and a couple of major) sins against progressive orthodoxy. His record has also earned 100% ratings from one liberal interest group after another, including the pro-choice Planned Parenthood and NARAL.
He’s not going to excite people, but people will like him. And he can do the job if he’s called to do the job.
The idea here, beyond just personal comfort on Hillary’s part, is that Trump’s only chance to win is to polarize the electorate along racial lines while holding most of the conservative electoral coalition in place. This pick hurts Trump’s efforts in two ways. It doesn’t attempt to play some demographic game to counter a spike in white support for Trump. Rather, it turns the heat down a bit racially. It also makes it a lot easier for anti-Trump Republicans to find some comfort level with going over to Clinton. It’s a comfort level that would be lacking if she had picked Elizabeth Warren or Al Franken.
A lot of people on the left want to have a more racially polarized election because they want to demonstrate the power of the new progressive coalition. A lot of people on the left want this election to adopt the anti-business populism of Bernie Sanders, with many thinking this is an essential component of blunting Trump’s populism.
Clinton is gambling that she doesn’t need to maximally mobilize the progressive coalition or go toe-to-toe with Trump on economic populism. Simple competency and calmness and readiness will reassure the vast middle in this country and allow her to eat deeply into the soft moderate hide of the GOP. Suburban women, socially liberal, environmentally conscious professionals, and Catholic fans of Pope Francis will see in Kaine exactly what they’ve been looking for.
That’s the theory anyway. Take the pot off boil, let the people digest the progressive revolution in small bites rather than in the kind of sweeping changes that disorient and cause anxiety.
If a big part of this country is saying “Slower, please,” this is a nod to them.
For all these reasons, picking Kaine made sense. But that doesn’t mean that it was definitely the right call. There are other theories of the case, and they say that people are looking for fast change. That’s what Trump is betting on, and that’s why, in his acceptance speech, he kept emphasizing how quickly he could solve our problems.
Kaine doesn’t help mobilize the Democratic base, and he probably hurts the Democrats’ ability to counter Trump’s anti-free trade populism.
But, I’ll tell you one last thing. My biggest problem with the Clintons has been all the drama they bring with them. Trump’s antics have kind of obliterated that concern in the public mind, but I love No Drama Obama and if we have No Drama Kaine, that’s something I can celebrate.
