The Kaine Play

EDIT 2: As this thing rolls in, it looks like Hillary has utterly blown it with ALL of Bernie's hard core supporters. Big time. I don't see how they vote for her, because they now hate her more than Trump. This is the point of inflection for the Clinton disaster, where it starts to go off rails in accelerated fashion.

EDIT: It seems clear that the DNC email leaks have a large probability of drastically changing all this. Bernie's folks are getting very, very angry as this comes out. Anything could happen in Philadelphia. I stand by my prediction that the Democrats will win the District of Columbia, so long as Kaine is on the ticket.

The Great Obama Wave, the cresting of the Democratic Party as the spearhead of Progressive politics, was born in the smashing defeat of the party in the 1984 elections at the hands of Ronald Reagan. In that defeat, especially during the primaries, the themes and elements of the coalition were formed that would eventually bring the Clintons to power, and after them Obama. It was a great free-for-all experiment that looked like pitiable chaos at the time, but created the political stew that would eventually come to dominate America for a time.

That time is winding down. The wave of '84 is receding. The price of success was that it had to elevate Obama as a great figurehead, and with his departure, there is an obvious drawing down of the energy. This is inevitable law of history. Revolutionaries love riding the upswing, but they hate the taste of the fruit at the end.

Now the Democrats are pretty much back to the Mondale set-up. Kaine is a pretty good pick for VP. He is excellent for solidifying the Party Democrats, the people who didn't have that big of a problem with Hillary all along, but were always open to voting for her. They love Kaine because they see him as the anti-Trump.

Kaine by himself might make a formidable challenger to Trump. If Clinton were not listed above it, the ticket might actually work. As such, in the fragmented Democratic caucus, Kaine's strengths also means he has terrible weaknesses too. T.

Picking Kaine uts any attack against Trump as misogynist over abortion. It weakens the War on Women issue, but that was not going to work much against Trump anyway. The Democrats have maxed on that line of attack and now it only digs into their dwindling support among men.

Mostly though, Kaine is pure D.C. The Democrats I know who have at any time worked for the federal government think he's the cat's meow. Like Mondale, the Democrats will easily grab the District's three electoral votes.

The ticket looks solid in many ways but has the feeling of one that will fall short in many ways, especially in connecting with the dilapidated Rust Belt that has been devastated by trade. The best scenario might be Hillary having another seizure during his address, and Kaine having to take over and pick a new V.P. (The Democrats will then have voted for Hillary so that she could pick the nominee)

And of course Kaine slaps a big question mark on the Bernie supporters. Jill Stein must be feeling her oats about now.

Everybody knows Kaine is TPP, as is Hillary.  The Berniecrats may break for/against Hillary based on this criterion:

Are you generally a believer and supporter of the necessity of the advancement what some call the cause of social justice as embodied by political corectness, especially when it comes to federal government hiring, hate crime laws, and public education, and this is this important enough to override your concerns about Hillary regarding issues of trade, globalism, and her backing by the Wall Street financial industry?

The Party Democrats will easily answer "yes" to this. Many are outright in favor of the globalist structures, because they see it as necessary for advancing world social and political goals (like environmentalism).  Others don't care about trade and globalism at all, and see all politics through social justice issues (for example, LGBTQ-driven voters). These people currently loathe Trump with a burning passion (although some of that comes across as twisted admiration on some level). Kaine was just icing on the cake for these folks.  Kaine-Schmain. Hillary is plenty enough for them.


But just for the record, on the eve of Sander's gut-wrenching endorsement of Hillary in New Hampshire (his one-stop crow-eating tour), when his die-hard supporters were pleading will all their  with him not to do it, this is what the top five links on the front page of the Reddit community /r/SandersForPresident looked like:

It is going to be an interesting convention next week.