When Hillary Clinton named Tim Kaine as her running mate, the questions came immediately: Was he too mild, too bland, too moderate – in short, too nice to wage a ferocious campaign against the likes of Donald Trump?
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Kaine added, “By the way, does anybody in this massive auditorium believe that Donald Trump has been paying his fair share of taxes?”
Hours before his big speech last night, Kaine’s nomination was
approved by voice vote under suspension of the rules – a move that was seen as an effort to quell opposition despite the objection of some Sanders supporters, who chanted, “Roll call!”.
Kaine brought up his father-in-law, Linwood Holton, a former Republican governor of Virginia, in an attack on Trump.
“As a bullish Larry Sabato, who runs the University of Virginia’s Center for Politics, wrote in the Washington Post, “[With] Kaine on the ticket, Virginia can probably retire its swing state jersey for this year”.
And he offered a series of tough attacks on Trump, offering an impression of the NY millionaire before mocking him as a “slick-talking, empty-promising, self-promoting one-man wrecking crew”.
The New Jersey senator was on the short list of running mates for Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton, but the pick eventually went to Kaine, the junior senator from Virginia.
Yeah, there was one very specific point about Kaine that stuck out to most people watching.
In his speech, Kaine also gave acknowledgement to Bernie Sanders, Clinton’s bitter rival in the primaries, in an effort to rally millions of Sanders supporters behind Clinton in the November 8 general election.
A little later in the speech, he took on Trump for not releasing his tax returns. I wonder. Donald Trump. He just says, “believe me”.
“We all should ‘feel the Bern, ‘” he said, “and we should all not want to get burned by the other guy”.
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Kaine’s blustery impression of Trump, the Republican nominee, saying “Believe me!” was objectively lacking but succeeded in getting the crowd laughing and ready for more.
