THE DAILY TRAIL: WHY HILLARY CLINTON PICKED TIM KAINE AS HER RUNNING MATE
Rebecca Sinderbrand
here were two big trail stories today — two different campaign approaches to claiming the news cycle hours after Republican National Convention ended. One candidate announced the selection of a mild-mannered running mate. The other revived charges that an opponent's father was linked to President Kennedy's assassin.
RAISING KAINE:
Weighing her VP pick, Chris Cillizza notes that Hillary Clinton isn't someone who takes many risks.
"She's a meticulous thinker who almost never leaps before looking. That caution has not always worked in her favor politically speaking but it is, without question, her defining trait.
"Clinton's selection of Tim Kaine, the Virginia senator, as her vice presidential running mate reflects that caution -- coupled with a confidence that this general election race is hers to lose.
"From the start of the vice presidential selection process, Kaine has always been at or near the top of any list of potential contenders. The reason is simple: He checks lots and lots of the traditional boxes one looks for in a vice president.
"Kaine comes from a swing state. He has executive and legislative experience. (Kaine was governor of Virginia from 2005 to 2009 and mayor of Richmond prior to that.) He has a strong Catholic religious background. (He was a missionary out of college.) He speaks fluent Spanish. He had been vetted favorably by then Senator Obama during the 2008 presidential campaign.
"And, most importantly, Kaine is a steady presence. He has been in the national spotlight -- both during the 2008 vetting and during his stint as Democratic National Committee chairman from 2009 to 2011. He knows how to handle the media, the scrutiny and the attacks that come with a high profile perch. He's even-keeled amid chaos.
"The flipside of all of that is that he is occasionally -- ok, often -- described as 'boring.' 'I am boring,' Kaine joked in an interview with 'Meet the Press' host Chuck Todd last month. But, the fact that Kaine is more workhorse than showhorse is what commended him to Clinton. Far from being a negative, Kaine's steadiness -- call it boringness if you want -- was a huge positive.
"Clinton/Kaine isn't the world's most exciting ticket. That's on purpose. Clinton clearly believes that the electoral map and the demographic realities of the country favor her. And that as long as she does nothing to roil the waters, she is likely to win in November.
"If Clinton felt as though she needed to either court the liberal left or more broadly shake up the race, she would have chosen someone like African-American Sen. Cory Booker or liberal icon Elizabeth Warren. But, she didn't and, in truth, I'm not sure how close she ever came to picking anyone other than Kaine.
"The Kaine pick is Clinton sending a very clear message : This is my race to win and I'm not going to take any unnecessary risks along the way to potentially screw that up.--Chris Cillizza
Not that the pick isn't without some potential controversy, says Aaron Blake, who notes that it "will come as a disappointment to many liberals. After rallying behind Sen. Bernie Sanders in the Democratic primary and being teased with Elizabeth Warren as Clinton's potential running mate -- an audition that appeared to go very well -- Clinton opted for a more boring, more moderate pick. This despite some liberal groups saying Kaine was unacceptable and even 'disastrous.'
"That last one is particularly telling. Kaine's political rise took place in what was then a red state. Accordingly, he's taken some pretty nuanced positions over the years. On abortion, that meant pro-choice groups haven't always been on-board, and NARAL Pro-Choice America declined to endorse his 2005 campaign for governor, when his platform included reducing the number of abortions and upholding certain abortion restrictions.
But since joining the Senate in 2013, Kaine has nothing but 100 percent ratings from NARAL and Planned Parenthood. And indeed, Kaine has crafted a largely progressive record as a senator. Conservative groups Heritage Action, the Club for Growth and the American Conservative Union have given him a series of 0 percent ratings in recent years.
"What does that mean? It means he hasn't really taken big votes that are deal-breakers for liberals. He might have some warts, but no tumors.
"...Indeed, Trump is such an unattractive alternative at this point that Clinton's VP pick probably never really mattered that much. People generally don't vote much on running mates, but in an election in which the two candidates are so polarizing, it seems likely it will be all about voting against the worse presidential nominee.
"All of which suggests she didn't need to pick a Warren type as an olive branch to Sanders backers. It might have been nice to have a vice presidential pick that the left would get excited about in a away they're not excited about Clinton, but there was no obvious pick in that regard. Her history with Warren was just too uneven, and Sanders was never really a consideration.
"Given the rest of her options, a Spanish-speaking former Christian missionary with plenty of progressive bona fides and a good reputation in Washington was a pretty obvious choice."
--Aaron Blake
There might be debate over whether or not the Kaine pick was a perfect ideal. There is less debate over the timing, which was not, notes Callum Borchers.
"There's a thing in the media business known as the 'news dump.' It's pretty self-explanatory: If you're a business or a political campaign with bad news to share, you dump it on reporters on the last day of the work week — after 4 p.m., when markets close, for best results — in the hope of burying it from public view.
"Better yet, you can dump the news on a weekend or a holiday. The whole idea is to pick a time when newsrooms aren't fully staffed and voters/consumers are focused on their social lives, not the headlines.
"The selection of a vice-presidential candidate is not the kind of news you want to dump at a low-visibility time; it's exactly the opposite. It's supposed to be an exciting, momentum-gathering moment that attracts lots and lots of positive coverage focused on what the running mate brings to the table. And yet, Hillary Clinton just announced her pick of Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.) Friday at 8 p.m. — smack dab in the middle of the dump zone.
"...the presumptive Democratic nominee was boxed in by back-to-back, major-party conventions. She could have tried to steal the spotlight from the Republican National Convention by making her pick earlier in the week, but fighting Donald Trump for attention is never a good idea. If she was planning to name Kaine on Friday all along, she was probably shooting for an earlier time — until a mass shooting in Munich, Germany, took over the afternoon news.
"Clinton didn't have a lot of options, unless she wanted save her announcement for the Democratic convention next week. But at that point, all eyes will be on her, anyway; you can't get a publicity boost if you're already maxed out.
"Thus the former secretary of state put her big news out on Friday night and put her faith in the round-the-clock nature of 21st-century news."
--Callum Borchers
There a few things you should know about Tim Kaine. There are surprising autobiographical notes and important policy positions. There is also this: his eyebrow was a meme. This was a real thing that really happened -- and there was once even speculation that it had hurt his chances at becoming Barack Obama’s vice president in 2008. Here's an explainer, via Cenk Uygur:
And so it's tim to get excited for the big Mike Pence-Tim Kaine showdown, coming soonish to a small screen near you.
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