5 takeaways on Tim Kaine
Pence projects the oh-gosh steadiness of a high school principal who picks up a stray candy wrapper while he is asking about your kids; Kaine is the guy who spent a year in Honduras teaching school to poor kids and another six coaching lawyers on ethics at the University of Richmond Law School. As mayor of Virginia’s capital, and later in the statehouse, he earned a clean-hands reputation — and you will not find any one of his Senate colleagues on either side of the aisle evince a single nasty thing about him.]
.. People close to Clinton were telling me as early as February that there really wasn’t anyone else on their short list. The main reason Clinton chose Kaine is so simple as to be unbelievable: She thinks he could serve as president if she can’t, and didn’t think anyone else she talked to fit that criterion. “She’s been in the White House, and knows the kind of person who can really do the job. … He gives off president vibes. And that’s all that mattered to Hillary,”
.. Pence’s pick was, in part, intended to minimize the damage Ted Cruz’s public rejection of Trump would inflict on the nominee’s standing among conservative freedom-and-values voters. Kaine, the scion of the Scots-Irish, is as well positioned to appeal to the party’s African-American and Hispanic base as any white politician.
.. Kaine is from purple-blue Virginia, which borders purple-red North Carolina, and his announcement will take place in who-the-hell-knows-what-they-are-Florida. If Clinton wins these three states, Trump goes back to selling steaks.