{"id":23197,"date":"2016-07-24T11:10:26","date_gmt":"2016-07-24T18:10:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/?p=23197"},"modified":"2016-07-24T11:10:26","modified_gmt":"2016-07-24T18:10:26","slug":"is-kaine-so-bad","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/2016\/07\/24\/is-kaine-so-bad\/","title":{"rendered":"Is Kaine so Bad?"},"content":{"rendered":"

When I fist learned that Hillary has picked Tim Kaine for VP, my initial reaction was disappointment.  Then I asked myself why I was disappointed, and had to admit that I don’t really know anything about him, except that many Bernie supporters don’t like him.  So I decided to see what I can learn before I knee jerk.  The following piece was written by Krystal Ball, a Bernie Supporter from VA, who used to appear on MSNBC’s The Cycle<\/em>.<\/font><\/p>\n

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\"0723TIM-KAINE\"<\/p>\n

Like a lot of Virginians, I\u2019ve had to chuckle a bit at the way Virginia Senator Tim Kaine has been portrayed since rising to the top of Secretary Clinton\u2019s VP short list. Apparently, the gods of conventional wisdom have decided Kaine is a \u201cboring,\u201d \u201csafe,\u201d \u201ccentrist\u201d pick whose \u201cDINO\u201d positions may make him anathema to the Sanders base. Oh really? Because I can assure you as a native Virginian, this caricature doesn\u2019t at all fit the man I\u2019ve watched over nearly 20 years. In fact, the consistent knock on him in every election in Virginia has been that he was too liberal!<\/strong> This was such an issue that when Kaine was elected Lieutenant Governor under Mark Warner in 2001, Warner used their first<\/a> joint press conference to distance himself from the controversial, left-leaning Kaine. So before you allow the national media topline and Kaine\u2019s status as a white Southern man to lull you into a quick judgment, here are a few things you should know about why this Bernie broad<\/strong> loves Tim Kaine. <\/p>\n

Kaine is the son of a welder who graduated from a Jesuit high school, flew through University of Missouri and then landed at Harvard Law. While his classmates were hanging out in Cambridge fielding offers from big firms, Kaine took a year off to do mission work in Honduras where he worked with young boys growing up in brutal poverty. The year abroad left him fluent in Spanish and with a deep commitment to using his Harvard law degree for the public good. After law school he made good on his commitment to service and rather than cashing in on his degree, spent much of his legal career fighting against housing discrimination<\/strong>. Now you just tell me, does that sound like the bio of a chamber-backed, blue dog, corporate Dem? <\/p>\n

Ahh but perhaps Kaine abandoned all his lofty principles in a quest for political power in a conservative Southern state! If that\u2019s your concern, perhaps you should just ask the NRA how they feel about Tim Kaine. Here\u2019s how his elections in Virginia typically go: the NRA gives him an F rating<\/strong>, fear mongers about how he\u2019s going to take everyone\u2019s guns, spends massively against him, and then Tim goes on to win anyway. Keep in mind, the NRA is literally headquartered in Virginia. If they are powerful anywhere they are powerful in the Old Dominion but that didn\u2019t stop Kaine from signing an executive order following the Virginia Tech massacre to keep guns out of the hands of the mentally ill. It also didn\u2019t stop him from pushing additional gun control measures as governor like eliminating the gun show loophole and it hasn\u2019t stopped him as Senator from continuing to lead the charge for sensible rules like increased background checks. As someone who ran for Congress, in Virginia, I can tell you that perhaps the definition of political courage for a Southern Dem is willingness to buck the gun lobby<\/strong>. Tim Kaine has been unflinching. <\/p>\n

Maybe though, Kaine was able to be bold on guns because he was right of center on everything else. Yeah, not so much. In Virginia, Kaine raised taxes, spearheaded efforts for universal pre-K, made Virginia the first Southern state to ban smoking in public places, and consistently opposed the death penalty<\/strong>. Let me repeat that last one. Tim Kaine consistently opposed the death penalty in a state that trails only Texas in number of executions. As governor, he bucked the prevailing law and order winds and vetoed eight different bills<\/a> that would have expanded capital punishment. The issue was front and center in his gubernatorial race but he stuck to the Catholic values that have guided his life and never backed down… [emphasis added<\/em>]<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

From <The Huffington Post<\/a>><\/font> <\/p>\n

In spite of his Catholic background, Planned Parenthood rates his voting record at 100%  Now, I’m not going to base my opinion of this man on one author, but Krystal is in a better position to know than any of the people I’ve heard denigrating him.  I urge you to click through for the rest.  Perhaps Tim Kaine may be a good choice after all.<\/font><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

When I fist learned that Hillary has picked Tim Kaine for VP, my initial reaction was disappointment.  Then I asked myself why I was disappointed, and had to admit that I don’t really know anything about him, except that many Bernie supporters don’t like him.  So I decided to see what I can learn before […]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-23197","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics","category-5-id","post-seq-1","post-parity-odd","meta-position-corners","fix"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23197","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=23197"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23197\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23197"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23197"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23197"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}