Tim Kaine as a VP pick

[brucejoel99]

Kaine was a highly qualified pick, but he was NOT a good pick. Sure, he by no means single-handedly doomed Hillary's campaign, but his choice was emblematic of why Hillary lost. Her number one challenge was convincing the Obama coalition & voters in general that she represented real change in a year when the electorate wanted an outsider. The VP pick was the one big chance for her to signal that, even though Hillary herself was the consummate establishment politician, she had heard the message loud & clear and was ready to shake things up.

And Hillary had a number of strong choices to pick from, including Warren (who clearly wanted the job), Sanders (politically unthinkable but he would've unified the party & supercharged millennial turnout), Brown (Sanders-lite), or even somebody like Castro or Booker who at least would've added charisma to the ticket & helped to keep the Obama coalition engaged.

So what happened? Hillary chose not just another insider, but one utterly lacking in charisma, apparently for no other reason than that she just felt more comfortable with Kaine than with somebody like Warren, who would've been a disruptive presence in Clintonworld. To be fair, I know Tim Kaine is a nice guy who's highly qualified & would've helped with Senate outreach, but the VP doesn't necessarily need to fulfill that role or any particular role from a governing standpoint.

It was surreal seeing Democratic Party insiders & the Washington press all sing Kaine's praises, while meanwhile it was obvious to many young &/or left-leaning voters that he was a terrible choice for the reasons I mentioned above.

[brucejoel99]

I actually agree with bruce's points, all of the said is correct. However, I'm not sure whether it would have been a good idea to jump on this outsider train just because Donald Trump and parts of the public/media have defined "outsider" as something positive. First off, Donald Trump is not an outsider and never has been. He's born rich, never had a real job or struggled to bring food on the table. He's as elite as it can get. Instead, he was and still is unprepared to be president. Second, his business career hardly qualifies him for any office, since he was never that much of a successful businessman. Even if you like a president who runs the country like a business, Trump isn't your man. Hillary and other politicans have done a lousy job in countering this notion an outsider in politics is always a good thing. Yes, you need some people in charge who come from other backgrounds such as business, military, law enforcement, education and so on. That isn't the point. The points is, outsiders are often unprepared and inexperienced, especially when they are either unable to assemble a competent team or just let others run the show in a bad manner (see Cheney and Bush). Maybe voters need to be asked why they want an inexperienced showman in government, but not anywhere else? Nobody wants an inexperienced doctor taking care of their own health. Just like you don't hire someone as pilot who has never landed a plane.

A politician's job is not always to sign on stuff that's popular at the moment, but to make the right thing popular through rational arguments and persuasion. I know that's harder in theory than in pratice, since we chose our political leaders all too often by their showman ability and not actual competence.

It certainly wouldn't feel good &/or right, but considering it won Trump an election, in hindsight, that's how you beat him.

[brucejoel99]

My big mark against Castro as a VP is that his support for more low income housing in suburbs while he was in HUD was not popular and could hurt with suburban voters.  Also, his advocacy of an open border is just a bad general election position.

Trump's recent dog-whistling on this issue (e.g., the "suburban housewives" Booker tweet) has only served to hurt him thus far, so I really doubt Castro's support for it would've been detrimental to a ticket with him on it in any significant fashion.