TODAY IN ORLANDO. #Hillary2016 #Pulse #DemsInPhilly pic.twitter.com/SjLn7pxcqf
— JoeMyGod (@JoeMyGod) July 22, 2016
DR Tucker at the Washington Monthly on Kaine:
While I anticipated that […] Hillary Clinton would select a running mate more admired by the progressive wing of the party, I have no grievance with her selection of Virginia Senator Tim Kaine as her partner.
Yes, there will be wailing and gnashing of teeth in some quarters because Caine is viewed as the ultimate centrist. [But] as Evan Popp notes, Kaine’s record is not nearly as offensive to progressives as is commonly assumed.
Kaine has assured Clinton he will oppose TPP https://t.co/T8FaNTAPQO via @mmcauliff @samsteinhp
— Amanda Terkel (@aterkel) July 23, 2016
Martin Longman says Hillary lowered the temperature of this election:
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. […]
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.
This will probably get lost, but it shows what kind of leader @HillaryClinton is in selecting one of @POTUS's first 2008 supporters.
— Graeme Crews (@GraemeCrews) July 23, 2016
Ed Kilgore says Kaine is safe and boring in a good way:
For all the talk of Kaine as a sort of political wallflower, he is actually an estimable man who has won losable campaigns in a state Republicans may need to win this year. He has a reputation as being ethically spotless, which matters a lot this year — any hint of scandal in a running mate could be disastrous for Clinton. As has often been noted, he is fluent in Spanish, which is not only a good weapon in a campaign against Donald “Deport ‘Em All” Trump, but a sop to those who were disappointed that the Veep was not Hispanic.
Despite the pushback from progressive Democrats when Kaine emerged as the front-runner for this gig, he’s by no means some sort of warmed-over Blue Dog. He’s a career civil rights lawyer in what was then a pretty conservative state — let that sink in for a bit. He was also the mayor of a relatively large and diverse city. He was elected governor despite an opponent pounding him relentlessly for a faith-based opposition to capital punishment, and he was smart and agile enough to turn the issue around and make it a positive. These are all good signs of both Democratic orthodoxy and political dexterity.
The one issue on which progressives have asked very legitimate questions about Kaine involves another faith-based position: his “personal opposition” to abortion. He’s been about as clear as possible in recent weeks that he’s firmly and comprehensively pro-choice, as he would absolutely have to be in a Hillary Clinton administration where the president is not exactly going to have to consult him or anyone else on this issue.
Hillary Clinton's pick of Tim Kaine tells you she is very confident about her chances of winning https://t.co/cr27bzEjKr
— Chris Cillizza (@TheFix) July 23, 2016
Kaine SUCCESSFULLY took on NRA in a gun state, smoking in a tobacco state, climate change in a coal state. #ProgressiveWhoGetsResults
— Ronald Klain (@RonaldKlain) July 23, 2016
Harry Enten says Kaine is a mainstream Democrat.
The average Democratic vice presidential nominee since 1976 scores a -33 and the median scored a -38. Perhaps it shouldn’t be too surprising that Clinton, who is running as the heir to Obama, selected a vice-president whose ideology is very close to that of Biden. (Biden’s average across the three metrics is a -38.)
The risk in Kaine is that he doesn’t excite the base. Clinton still has some problems with former Bernie Sanders supporters, and Kaine probably isn’t going to make them go gaga, unlike Elizabeth Warren, who averages a -67. Kaine is actually closer to the middle than Clinton is. He’s already getting hit from the left for his vote to fast-track approval of the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal.
Indeed, Kaine is unlikely to excite anyone at this point because he isn’t well-known. Just 40 percent of Americans can form an opinion of him in an average of recent Marist College and YouGov surveys. That puts him close to the average of previous vice presidential picks.