Unlike the public drama that played out before Donald Trump officially unveiled Indiana Gov. Mike Pence as his running mate, Clinton’s selection of Sen.
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Kaine’s rise through the political world has been steady and, in some cases, with a hint of luck: He won his Senate seat four years ago when incumbent Jim Webb, a first-term senator, did not seek re-election.
The pair will hit the campaign trail together in Florida on Saturday.
Hillary Clinton is set to snatch attention from Republicans by naming her running mate in advance of the Democratic convention, with Virginia Senator Tim Kaine the leading contender. Just as with Obama, Kaine has talked of Clinton’s own barrier-breaking candidacy in 2016. Speaking with donors in California this week, he described the role of vice president in the first female presidency as historic.
Marc Parrone, president of United Food and Commercial Workers Union, praised Kaine for a long record of having “supported hard-working families and worked to make their lives better”.
Virginia’s Democratic governor, Terry McAuliffe, a close Clinton friend and ally, will name a replacement for Kaine if he and Clinton win the White House. His supporters predicted that Kaine would excel in the national spotlight, and his down-to-earth persona, self-deprecating humor and habit of breaking out a harmonica at campaign stops would help him connect with voters across the country. Vice President Joe Biden joined Kaine in the aftermath of the Newtown, Conn., shooting to highlight those reforms as a template for what could be accomplished on the national level. “You could tell it was a matter of deep principle for him”. He has said the Obama administration needed to get authorization from Congress to use force against ISIS, and he has been critical of Congress for not granting an Authorization for Use of Military Force. Bob Corker, R-Tenn., the Foreign Relations Committee chairman and co-sponsor of the legislation.
Two days later, Kaine and his wife, Anne, joined Clinton in NY for lunch, along with Clinton’s husband, former President Bill Clinton, daughter Chelsea and Chelsea’s husband.
He also told the Post that he’s not very good.
“The last thing we need are leaders who try to divide us even more than we are”. Angus King, an independent from ME and also a former governor, wrote in an op-ed encouraging Clinton to choose his colleague.
Allies say he brings a number of assets to the ticket, including a personal style that could boost a Democratic standard-bearer with low personal favorability ratings. “He comes across very much as the same person that I imagine he was before entering public service – very humble, easygoing and grounded”.
Still, Kaine has liabilities, particularly with progressives. George Allen. In the Senate, he has been praised for building relationships on both sides of the aisle, and he could help Clinton with her legislative priorities in Congress.
That was based in part on a bipartisan letter that Kaine signed on Monday urging the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau to “carefully tailor its rulemaking” regarding community banks and credit unions so as not to “unduly burden” these institutions with regulations aimed at commercial banks. Democracy for America, a group that endorsed Kaine, cast the changes sought by Kaine and other senators as a “lobbyist-driven effort to help banks dodge consumer protection standards and regulations created to prevent banks from destroying our economy”.
In the speech, Kaine said he felt it was appropriate to speak in his second language because Spanish – which has been spoken in the US for hundreds of years – is still “spoken by more than 40 million Americans with a huge investment in the result of this debate”. “Unfortunately, since Tim Kaine voted to fast-track the Trans-Pacific Partnership, Republicans now have a new opening to attack Democrats on this economic populist issue”, said Stephanie Taylor, co-founder of the Progressive Change Campaign Committee.
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