As Hillary’s inner circle has circled the wagons around Kaine, it now appears likely that Hillary Clinton will pick Sen. Tim Kaine (DINO-VA) to be her recommendation to the delegates of the Democratic National Convention for the office of Vice President of the United States.
There are a number of reasons why Tim Kaine is, by anyone’s imagination, not the safe pick for our party’s national ticket.
He supports restrictions on abortion
Kaine is not 100% pro-choice by anyone’s imagination. Kaine has publicly supported some restrictions on the ability of women to make their own health care decisions. Most notably, Kaine has supported abstinence-only sex education, banning so-called “partial-birth abortion”, and forcing teenage women who seek to terminate a pregnancy to get parental consent.
He supports Wall Street’s political agenda
As recently as a few days ago, Kaine has publicly called for further deregulation of the financial industry, even though deregulation of the financial industry under Republican and Democratic presidents led to the Great Recession:
Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.) is on Hillary Clinton’s short list of potential vice presidential nominees. He’s also actively pushing bank deregulation this week as he campaigns for the job.
Kaine signed two letters on Monday urging federal regulators to go easy on banks ― one to help big banks dodge risk management rules, and another to help small banks avoid consumer protection standards.
Those two reasons, in and of themselves, are enough for me to say that Tim Kaine should not be the Democratic vice-presidential nominee, although the fact that Kaine has virtually zero appeal to the over 40% of Democratic voters who voted or caucused against Hillary in the Democratic primaries and caucuses would divide the Democratic Party between its own leaders and many of its core supporters is another reason why Kaine should not be the VP nominee. In fact, I would encourage any DNC delegates who are opposed to Kaine being VP to run another candidate, whether it be someone who Hillary has vetted or not, for vice president, which would force a convention roll call on the VP nomination.
Would I vote for a Clinton/Kaine ticket, if Kaine is nominated for VP? Given that the opposition is a Republican ticket consisting of Donald Trump, the architect of a would-be fascist society in America, and Mike Pence, the architect of religious discrimination in Indiana, I would do so. However, I would prefer that someone who is more progressive and/or has more appeal to voters open to voting for our party’s national ticket than Kaine does be our party’s vice-presidential nominee.