“On one side of the scales you’ve got a ticket made up of two people with troubling attitudes towards the financial sector. On the other side, you’ve got maybe fascism. They are not even remotely of the same weight.”
The Democratic Strategist is one of my regular online stops. Describing itself as “proudly partisan, firmly and insistently based on facts and data and emphatically open to all sectors and currents of opinion within the Democratic community,” it’s is a good source for involved Democratic.
Ed Kilgore edits the site and publishes articles in various magazines. He has a piece on Tim Kaine. After reading it, I started thinking of the weird inclusion of “You Can’t Always Get What You Want” at the Republican convention; Kaine may not be the pick that progressives wanted, but neither is he a pure centrist with no capacity to grow. Based on a couple of votes, we think we know him. He deserves the chance to earn our trust and respect.
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.
In a vacuum Kaine’s unfortunately timed expressions of support for less regulation of regional banks, and for the Trans-Pacific Partnership, aren’t necessarily deal-breakers for a Veep. The first issue does not involve the biggest banks that are the target of progressive ire, and the second, after all, aligns him with the Democratic President of the United States, whose popularity throughout the party remains high despite occasional lefty grumbling.
Supporters of Bernie Sanders have suffered a lot of frustration this year. Yes, he was very successful, but that doesn’t make his eventual loss any less disappointing. It’s not surprising that Tim Kaine comes as a disappointment to many of Sanders supporters who want to see concrete results of having reoriented the Democratic Party.
As much as some of us will struggle with Tim Kaine’s nomination, it might be helpful to look at what he has done in a state that still isn’t reliably blue. Don’t ignore what you disagree with, but remember to give credit where it’s due. This guy has respectable liberal accomplishments to his name. After all, which of us wants to be remembered for where we fell short?
Seeing rave, rave reviews of his remarks. I’ll try to keep an open mind.
And anyone who decides to determine their support based on a VP pick — not a platform, not experience, not for whom the nominee campaigns, not their donors, but one of the most useless jobs in government — they’re rationalizing, not deciding.
He was elected Governor by running a stream of ads calling himself a conservative committed to opposing gay marriage, abortion, and that he would follow Virginia law on the death penalty.
The death penalty stance was hardly a profile in courage. His faith based opposition was meaningless since he let nearly every execution go through, most of them for black defendants including one classified as intellectually disabled. Those are 11 lives in his hands, including a mentally handicapped defendant, that he allowed to die for purely political reasons. What’s the point of a faith based opposition to the death penalty if it means doing nothing to stop it?
And it’s a categorically different issue than choice. I’m personally opposed to abortion, but using the government to force a women to have a child she doesn’t want erodes her personal autonomy and constitutional rights. We can encourage her to make better choices to avoid unwanted pregnancies and seek alternatives to abortions, but we can’t force her to choose what we want since it’s not our choice to make. I strongly respect that and will defend his position as consistent with liberalism and Catholic social teaching.
The death penalty is different since the state is in the business of taking life, many of those lives are black, poor and mentally ill. It’s also different since a governor can in fact choose life and save real people without endangering the rights of others. A governor can commute death sentences, which doesn’t release these potentially dangerous people back on the streets and it doesn’t impose ones values on another without their consent. I think this was clearly an act of political cowardice, and as a one term Governor he could’ve made the risks his successor Terry McAuliffe has made in advancing the rights and freedoms of individuals behind bars.
I like Tim Kaine personally and he’s not the disaster so many feel he is, he will make a good Vice President. He’s not my choice for 2024, I think we can and should look wider and do better with our nominee then. For now, I think he will be a good player in this administration and do the hard work required to campaign and win in 2016. But let’s not repeat inaccuracies about how courageous he was in his 2005 campaign. He ran away from his deeply held values in order to win.
You throw “one term” in there as if he lost or wimped out of running again. In Virginia, governors are prohibited from running for re-election by Virginia constitution.
…since he noted that a one-term governor could take risks I think he was acknowledging that there was no possibility of a second term.
Virginia has quite a tradition of former governors winning second elections. They just can’t run back-to-back elections.
…pro TPP, NAFTA, CAFTA……what’s not to like? He’s the modern Democrat.
Silly me, stuck in the dark ages when Democrats had blue collars…
a chance to earn your approval?
Let him publicly state that he is against “Right to Work”, against NAFTA, TPP, and for MORE regulations on the banks and I will give him my full approval.
If he does not, as a blue collar worker, why should I be for this guy?
(and can you answer without using the words “Donald Trump”)
I misplaced the comment.
Of course, trolling rules require him to say he will, but what in his pots and comments leads you to believe he will. If there is no more “the ticket is beneath me, and convince me otherwise”, what else does johnt have to say?
I don’t mind Kaine as VP if it gets him out of the Senate. But do we really have to all chant in unison “give him a chance to earn our support”?
I admire the solidarity displayed by the head of Planned Parenthood when, on the Maddow show Friday, she was confronted with Kaine’s actual record. “He’s evolved”, she said, but the expression on her face was painful to watch.
She has to pretend that Kaine is something he’s not. We don’t.
He’s probably not going to state it. Besides he’ll have to say and do pretty much what Clinton tells him to which will be opposing “right to work” and TPP and more regulations on banks. If so, it will be up to you to believe him or not.
Yes, I can answer without saying the words “Donald Trump.” You say you’re voting for Clinton. That’s enough for me. We can disagree about other things. The snottiness of JohnK, Mullaley, and MethuenProgressive on Bernie/Clinton is uncalled in my opinion. The difference between a political pro and a hack is how we deal with victory and defeat. You don’t like doing so, but you’re voting for Hillary. I would have been less upset about voting for Bernie, but would have done the same. That’s grown up behavior. As a party, that’s what we need: principled positions, hard fights, eventual reconciliation for the good of the country and party.
We simply don’t know enough about Kaine to get worked up about it.
In truth, a vice president is not all that powerful, sitting four or maybe eight years in the shade of Number One.
I’d take Kaine for VP and someone better for SCOTUS than Sherrod Brown and Merrick Garland.
He’d better disavow right to work. I don’t care if he’s running for dog-catcher. But he will.
I care about him walking the walk over the years on racial justice. That is more important to me than anything else. And finally FINALLY a mayor. A potentially brilliant pick to retain Pennsylvania. And talk about a trump card on the military. And he can speak- well.
But I still fear not unifying the party by not picking Bernie may look like a lost opportunity in retrospect if Caesar wins and ends the Roman Republic.
You’d think, right? Al Gore was a veteran, as was John Kerry. Neither George W Bush nor Dick Cheney were. And yet that didn’t play well at all. Donald Trump insulted each and every American prisoner of war in our entire history, and he escaped unscathed.
He’s Crassus.