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Saturday 23 July 2016

HILLARY CLINTON PICKS SEN.TIM KAINE AS VICE PRESIDENT

   Hillary Clinton and Sen. Tim Kaine of Virginia at campaign rally in Annandale, Va., on July 14, 2016. (Photo: Saul Loeb/AFP/Getty Images)
Hillary Clinton and Sen. Tim Kaine of Virginia at a campaign rally in Annandale, Va., on July 14, 2016

Hillary Clinton announced Friday that she has picked Sen. Tim Kaine of Virginia as her running mate, making a safe, centrist choice that will likely disappoint some in the progressive wing of her party.

“I’m thrilled to tell you this first: I’ve chosen Sen. Tim Kaine as my running mate,” Clinton wrote in a text message to her supporters Friday night. In a later email, she said she chose Kaine because she was confident he could step in and be president at a “moment’s notice” and because he is beloved by his staff and Senate colleagues. “To know Tim is to love him,” she wrote.

Clinton will appear with Kaine Saturday at a rally in Miami, where the 58-year-old former governor of Virginia will likely show off his Spanish skills picked up in his younger days during a year in Honduras working alongside missionaries. The pair will then head to the Democratic National Convention next week.

Kaine offers Clinton many strengths as a running mate: He has foreign policy experience from his time on the Armed Services and Foreign Relations Committee in the Senate; he can boost her chances to win the battleground state of Virginia; and he has a squeaky-clean, nice-guy image that could help Clinton with her trust issues among voters. Kaine is self admittedly “boring,” and is a middle-aged white man, but he also speaks fluent Spanish and has attended a predominantly black church for two decades, suggesting he could be better than expected at minority voter outreach.

What Kaine is not, however, is an attack dog. He’s also not a liberal stalwart able to draw disaffected supporters of Sen. Bernie Sanders to the ticket, such as Sen. Elizabeth Warren, who was also considered for the VP job. When Clinton and Kaine appeared at a rally together in Annandale, Va., last week, Kaine debuted family-friendly attack lines against Trump, calling him a “me-first” candidate who “trash talks” Latinos, women and others. This was in sharp contrast to Warren, who called Trump a “small, insecure money-grubber” in a barnstorming appearance with Clinton in May.

So far, the Clinton campaign has been surprisingly bold in the progressive positions they’ve carved out,” Adam Green, founder of the Progressive Change Campaign Committee, said last week. “And to go an extremely cautious route with a VP pick would cut against their pattern so far.

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