YES SHE KAINE!
Hillary taps Va. senator for veep
KAINE IS willing and able — to be vice president.
Hillary Clinton chose “relentless optimist” Tim Kaine as her running mate Friday night — adding a battle-tested, if unexciting, swing-state senator, to the Democratic ticket.
The Virginia senator is a wellvetted Democratic foot soldier who’s well respected throughout the party and has national campaign experience.
The former governor is also popular in Virginia, a hotly-contested state in presidential elections.
Clinton tweeted her decision just after 8 p.m., ending days of speculation on who her pick would be.
“I’m thrilled to announce my running mate, @timkaine, a man who’s devoted his life to fighting for others,” her message said.
She added that he “believes no problem is unsolvable if you put in the work to solve it.”
Kaine himself tweeted, “I’m honored to be her running mate.”
The 58-year-old is a devout Catholic with working-class roots and close ties to his state’s African-American and Latino communities.
He’s attended a predominantly black Catholic church in Richmond for decades, and began his career as a lawyer fighting for fair housing for the city’s AfricanAmerican community.
He also speaks fluent Spanish, a skill he picked up during his time as a missionary in Honduras. Kaine also comes with both executive and foreign policy experience.
The worst thing most Democrats have to say about him is that he’s boring — a characterization Kaine himself agrees with.
Clinton told CBS’ Charlie Rose earlier this week that Kaine was a “world-class mayor, governor and senator,” pointing out that he’d never lost an election.
“He’s very much driven by that Catholic sense of social justice, of trying to help others. You’ve seen that his whole life — as a missionary, as a young civil rights attorney in the capital of the confederacy, where he took a bunch of fair-housing cases,” said Mo Elleithee, a longtime Kaine strategist who worked on Clinton’s 2008 campaign. “He’s truly a servant at heart.” Clinton is expected to make the official announcement during a joint campaign appearance in Miami on Saturday.
Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump, in a text to his own supporters, said Clinton, Kaine, and President Obama
were “the ultimate insiders” and implored voters to not “let Obama have a 3rd term.”
A native Midwesterner, Kaine was born in Minnesota and grew up in Kansas City, Mo., where his dad owned a welding business.
He has a personal style and demeanor closer to the heartland than the South. He may do for Clinton what Vice President Biden did on the campaign trail for Obama — heading to more populist, culturally conservative areas where his running mate is less than beloved.
“He’s maybe not electrifying but people get enough electricity these days. He’s engaging, he can draw you in with his understated presence,” said Elleithee.
Kaine is unlikely to do much to woo still-wary former Bernie Sanders supporters.
Like Clinton, he has backed some foreign policy moves disliked by the party’s progressive wing, like a no-fly zone in Syria. He’s also supported the TransPacific Partnership in the past, and he’s a moderate on many social issues.
But Kaine has proven adept at carrying water for party nominees in the past, serving as a top Obama surrogate in 2008, then having a solid run as chairman of the Democratic National Committee during President Obama’s early years in office.
He’s also a bridge between the Obama and Clinton wings of the party. Kaine was a finalist in Obama’s own veepstakes decision — only to be edged by fellow Irish Catholic Biden. He remains close to the President, who reportedly touted him as a good choice for running mate to Clinton.
This time around, he was one of the first big-name Democrats to throw his support behind the “Ready for Hillary” draft movement two years ago. Kaine could also serve as a powerful surrogate on gun control.
A gun owner, Kaine has supported modest gun control reforms. He stayed true to those views even though they’re considered very controversial in his GOP-leaning state, which is also home to the powerful pro-gun National Rifle Association.He’s cited the 2007 Virginia Tech massacre as the worst day of his life. In its aftermath, he signed an executive order to make it harder for the mentally ill to buy guns, and unsuccessfully pushed for universal background checks in his state.
Kaine personally opposes abortion and the death penalty. But he’s a longtime supporter of Planned Parenthood and legal abortion, and followed through on a campaign promise to continue executions as Virginia governor.
Kaine is viewed skeptically by some progressives, who dislike his support of free trade and Wall Street.
But others pointed to the alternative.
“The Clinton-Kaine ticket is everything the Trump-Pence ticket is not: competent, steady and committed to giving all Americans a fair shot to succeed,” said Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.).