The progressive case for Kaine seems to boil down to this:
The pundit case for Kaine seems to boil down to this:
In other words, he’s safe and boring and that’s appealing given what Trump is dishing on the other side. (The “battleground” argument is pretty moot, VPs don’t deliver states that the ticket wouldn’t already deliver without him or her.)
Those are both decent arguments. Kaine isn’t a monster. He’s safe and boring and objectionable on some things, great on others.
My problem with Kaine is that the Clinton campaign, rather than use this pick to excite the party and truly bring it together, now has to deal with new discontent and anger, and will waste how many weeks convincing people that Kaine isn’t all that bad—weeks that could’ve been spent unified and singularly focused on Trump. It is absolutely a wasted opportunity and a self-inflicted wound. I’d garner that it’s downright idiotic.
Any number of candidates could’ve had us here celebrating tonight, instead we’re relitigating the primary wars, and really, who the fuck had the energy to do that? Remember, there were two big objections to Clinton—Wall Street and Trade. Kaine is great on all those other things except … Wall Street and Trade. Clinton literally just reinforced and validated the primary arguments against her. So yeah, here were are, in discord, on the eve of our convention.
But let’s also not lose perspective. This isn’t the end of the world, and the VP doesn’t wag the president’s tail. Remember the biggest argument against Elizabeth Warren being VP, that she’d disappear from public sight and be rendered impotent? Well, that’s now Tim Kaine. The VP position might matter with a crusading advocate like Warren, but someone as vanilla and boring as Kaine? It’ll all be harmless in the end.
It’s clear I’m not happy about this pick, but I’m also not losing perspective. This is a minor distraction in the end, and we’ll plunge forward with the ticket we have, not the one we wish we had (and I bet, at this point, that the number of people who had both Clinton and Kaine as their top picks for the ticket is down to like 3% of the party). And in a few weeks, we’ll forget Kaine is a thing and head into battle with Clinton because this week reminded us what the alternative is.
