Many here are working hard to defend Hillary Clinton’s choice for VP. Some arguments are good. The man has an impressive resume that suggests he will run the government competently should he be required to do so, and he comes from a battleground state.
But I also keep seeing people defend her choice with this misguided argument: “Clinton needs to do better with white male voters, and Kaine is the best choice for that.” When asked how Kaine will help her with white male voters, they only come up with one reason: Kaine is a white male.
Dumb.
If this year’s primaries proved anything, it’s that in 2016, simple-minded identity politics don’t work. In the Democratic primaries, women voters younger than 40 overwhelmingly rejected the woman candidate to vote instead for the most crotchety old man in the Senate. Men over 50, meanwhile, voted for the woman.
On the Republican side, Latino voters voted more heavily for white candidates than for Latino ones. Women overwhelmingly voted for male candidates over the female one. And white male Republicans who rejected Trump (ie the voters Clinton is now courting) voted mostly for Cruz (Latino) or Rubio (Latino), though a few voted instead for Carson (black).
Want to win white male voters? Forget running a white male candidate. Instead, run a candidate who will help white men. Run a candidate who will protect white men’s jobs, who will help white men go through college and get needed healthcare without going broke, who will protect the white men who have already gone broke from predatory lenders, who will stop the government from giving white men’s tax dollars to big banks, who will protect white male consumers from being ripped off by greedy corporations, and protect white male workers from being ripped off by greedy employers. Elizabeth Warren vows to do these things for white men (and for everyone else in America). Tim Kaine doesn’t. If the goal was to win white male voters, Kaine was the wrong choice.