Ricochet is the best place on the internet to discuss the issues of the day, either through commenting on posts or writing your own for our active and dynamic community in a fully moderated environment. In addition, the Ricochet Audio Network offers over 50 original podcasts with new episodes released every day.
Clinton Chooses Kaine
It’s official: Hillary Clinton has chosen former mayor, governor, and senator Tim Kaine as her running mate.
The newly formed Democratic ticket took the stage together for the first time in Miami, showing off a partnership that prizes steadiness over flashiness.
As Hillary Clinton presented her vice-presidential choice, Virginia Sen. Timothy M. Kaine, to a roaring crowd of supporters, she noted that her choice stood in clear contrast to the Republican nominee Donald Trump and his running mate, Indiana Gov. Mike Pence.
“Senator Tim Kaine is everything Donald Trump and Mike Pence are not,” Clinton said. “He is qualified to step into this job and lead on day one.”
“And he is a progressive who likes to get things done!”
The two launched their partnership here at Florida International University, a campus that is two-thirds Hispanic. The diverse audience waved American flags and Puerto Rican flags as they waited — in some cases for hours — for Clinton and Kaine to take the stage.
After months of deliberation, Clinton announced on Friday night that she had chosen Kaine, passing over a number of other more diverse candidates for a self-described “boring” white man from Virginia.
What are your thoughts about the pick?
Published in General
‘And he is a progressive who likes to get things done!”
There’s your problem right there , I want them to STOP doing things . The only thing I want done is get the federal government out of my life .
If you suffer from insomnia the Pence v. Kane debate should help you get over it.
This makes me so proud to be a Virginian!
Eric Metaxas had a pretty good take on Kaine:
On Rachel Maddow yesterday former NAACP president Ben Jealous wonders out loud what Kaine brings to the ticket “…he doesn’t bring any demographic, there’s going to be a lot of Latino voters who know they could have had Julian Castro, could have had Tom Perez, he’s not going to bring the fire of a Cory Booker, it’s not clear frankly how he helps.” I could only find it in video (I watched Rachel Maddow so you didn’t have to), it starts around the 1:45 mark. He goes on and mentions Elizabeth Warren and Jennifer Granholm.
http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow/watch/kaine-utility-to-clinton-ticket-questioned-730802755686
Clinton evidently figures she’s got black, brown, and women in her pocket so she decided to go after that demographic where she is really in trouble, boring white guys.
Side note: while tracking down the Ben Jealous segment on MSNBC’s site, it’s actually funny how they have the absolute most flattering pictures of Kaine that could possibly be located, while all the pictures of Trump have a dour threatening scowl or worse. Here’s a sample. Note the unintentional irony that the story about Trump “Trump Is Appealing To Fear, Will It Work?” is on the same page as “Suicide Blasts In Kabul Kill, Injure More Than 300 People”
It’s a desperation pick by the Hilldebeast, and it won’t work.
I think the fact that it took nearly 24 for the pick to be announced here says everything we need to know about it. The only thing I can see is that he is to bland what Trump is to gaudy.
He stripped the bark off Trump today (on Putin, NATO, and John McCain), and smiled the whole time, while Trump sent some ignorant tweets. Kaine made a nice contrast to the impotent Mike Pence, who yesterday morning sat by like a helpless child while the Orange One doubled down on his conspiracy theories and lies. If things keep going in this direction, Cruz will be fully vindicated, while Ryan, Priebus, Christie and the rest of the coterie of sycophants will be begging for internships.
I like the ClintonKaine next to the big Hospital H.
At first glance it looks like HACK.
If Hillary was reaching out to Catholics, she shouldn’t have bothered.
Kaine is a typical Democrat weasel who’s personally opposed to abortion but wants women to make their own “reproductive decisions.” That’s nonsense, because when women agree to have sex, that’s when they make a “reproductive decision.” The decision after that is only about whether you’re going to kill a human being. Do we ever leave that decision to individuals?
I don’t know who Hillary is pandering to, but if she thinks she’s appealing to Catholics … she’s shallower than I previously thought.
As a boring white guy in his late 50’s I’m glad my people are finally getting some long-overdue recognition.
Who?
I think it’s a smart move, Hillary watched this week’s GOP convention and decided she just needs to play it safe, avoid unforced errors, and run out the clock to beat a weak opponent. She was under pressure from her party’s left to pick someone from the progressive wing, someone in the Bernie or Elizabeth Warren mold. Now she’s thinking fear of a Trump presidency will be sufficient to motivate her base to turn out in November.
The other major concern about Hillary is her age, rumors about her health have swirled for years, plus there’s always the remote possibility of an indictment or impeachment. Picking a running mate with executive experience as a governor and mayor, someone who seems ready to step into the White House should anything happen to Hillary, lays that concern to rest.
Kaine is an effective speaker, so he’ll be dangerous.
However.
Here’s Kaine of yesteryear, via National Review:
I believe that marriage is between a man and a woman and that marriage is a uniquely valuable institution that must be preserved.
And
[I support] the current Virginia restrictions on abortion and passing an enforceable ban on partial birth abortion that protects the life and health of the mother….
And
Tim Kaine strongly supports the Second Amendment. As the next Governor of Virginia, he will not propose any new gun laws.
He reversed these positions–every single one of them–when it became useful to do for his later political ambitions.
And there’s this bit, which I’d like to see the Trump/Pence campaign hammer on and hammer on. Clinton’s and Kaine’s Progressivism, about which each of them brag, goes back to the early 20th Century. Here’s what Herb Croly, one of the founders of the Progressive Movement during that early 20th Century period (a movement that was carried forward by Woodrow Wilson and Franklin Roosevelt, and pushed enthusiastically today by Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton), had to say about us Americans and about democracy in his The Promise of American Life:
To be sure, any increase in centralized power and responsibility, expedient or inexpedient, is injurious to certain aspects of traditional American democracy. But the fault in that case lies with the democratic tradition; and the erroneous and misleading tradition must yield before the march of constructive national democracy.
And
…the average American individual is morally and intellectually inadequate to serious and consistent conception of his responsibilities as a democrat.
Eric Hines
Don’t be concerned with the snark and counter-snark of Debate Club. Only the people who’ve already made up their minds (see above) pay attention to that.
The important fact is that Hillary made the announcement the day after the RNC ended. If the convention had been a disaster she would have waited at least one full news cycle for her media to spin the disaster narrative and beat-up on Trump, and only then made her pick public.
That she didn’t wait means the Democrats want to take attention away from the positive impression the convention made on the country.
I didn’t say on Ricochet. On the country.
Her pander to white beta males is touching.
Doomed, but touching.
Smart surehanded selection straight out of the Clinton playbook.
Wisely avoided Corey Booker and his comic book hero conception of himself, the puppyish Julian Castro and Tom Perez (please read with Ehrlich Bachmann flourish).
The press, even the lefter-wing press, has fallen in line.
Kaine is a smart, centrist Democrat with mayor, governor, senator cred who projects a likeable good-guyness.
Reciting former positions on guns, religious freedom, marriage and abortion which were somewhat centrist only makes him more appealing to true independents I’m afraid.
He reminds one of the doughy, low-T character Ned Beatty played so memorably in Deliverance. Exactly the way Hillary wants all men to behave.
When her campaign falters Timmy will be the one catching the missiles she’ll be pitching so Bill will be pleased.
Clinton has her own utterly insular beltway elites that she listens to. They scripted this based on the white flight from the dems. It won’t work. To vote for dems is to vote for racism hate and despair. Obama did so much hating he has labeled his party for a long time. The only white males voting Hillary will be the beta worm kind and Kaine will fail outside of VA and perhaps there too.
On Saturday? Who makes a major announcement on the weekend? She would have had to wait until Monday, and their convention starts Monday, so then she’d be stealing her own thunder.
The Romney strategy to a tee.
Stealing her own thunder? You must be kidding. It’s common to draw out the suspense of an event where the ending is already known and you only have one mystery – the VP – with which to tease the audience and boost the ratings.
Waiting until Monday night certainly would have been the smart play if the RNC had been perceived as a disaster.
Now the Sunday shows will be focusing on Kaine and the Democrats, instead of on the Trump “disaster” – because it wasn’t.
Obama wasn’t a weak opponent, he was a popular and admired incumbent President seeking re-election. It makes sense to play it safe against a weaker opponent while taking more risks when you are the underdog.
I never said it was a disaster, are people saying that?
It served its purpose. Trump dispensed with the “dump Trump” movement with little fuss, won the nomination, and got a bump in the polls — the Gravis poll from 7/21-7/22 actually shows him at 51%, which is remarkable. Now the ball’s in Hillary’s court to return the serve with a good enough acceptance speech to get her own bounce and retake the lead.
You seem to forget he seemed very beatable. Which is why Romney played it safe. And why he lost.
Many conservatives deluded themselves into thinking that, but the graph you yourself included shows otherwise: Obama led the whole way. The very best Romney could do was pull even for a while, he never once had a solid lead.
Well it’s not like Pence didn’t jettison his views to become Trump’s VP. Hardly seems fair to hold Kaine to a higher standard.
Romney did try to play some things safe, particularly the needle threading over US foreign policy and military stance, but how was Ryan a “safe” choice?
Ryan was then, before his recent reinventions, the chief budget hawk amongst GOP leaders and his proposals re future healthcare spending weren’t really tailor made for the elder vote in Florida (or North Carolina).
Who was the “daring” veep pick Romney eschewed? Pawlenty, Portman, Ayotte or Daniels?
Seems to me that Trump was far more cautious than Romney. Should have gone for Jim Webb.
A) I wasn’t comparing him to anybody, much less Pence.
B) Rule #4.
Eric Hines
Joseph Stanko
“I never said it [the RNC] was a disaster, are people saying that?”
You did say that in a way, by disagreeing with me that Hillary’s VP choice on Saturday was a sure sign that Trump had had a positive convention, in spite of all the media blather about “darkness,” “division” and “hate.”
I believe she would have preferred a little drama for her own convention, but that she needed to “step on” the Trump bounce quickly.
Listening to Ricochet’s podcasts one would have concluded, wrongly, that the RNC was a fiasco.
But that’s Ricochet these days.
I only made it halfway through this week’s podcast. Couldn’t stand all the whining.