Hillary Clinton Test Runs a Potential VP

Tim Kaine auditions in Virginia.

Jeffrey Collins/AP

Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.


Hillary Clinton VP hopeful Tim Kaine auditioned Thursday afternoon at a campaign event in Northern Virginia, where he introduced the presumptive Democratic nominee and demonstrated his fitness for the job by speaking Spanish and attacking Donald Trump.

The Virginia senator has long been in the top tier of potential Clinton running mates. A former governor who represents a swing state in Congress and who passed the vetting process when Barack Obama looked for a VP in 2008, Kaine has often been labeled the “boring,” safe choice among Clinton’s options. In his speech Thursday, Kaine didn’t quite contradict that perception, relying on even-tempered-dad jokes and carefully scripted attacks. But he did convey a comfortable and friendly shared stage presence with Clinton.

Kaine kicked off his speech with a shout-out to DREAMers in the crowd and then praised Ready for Hillary—the proto-campaign super-PAC that boosted Clinton before she launched her official presidential campaign—noting that the word “ready” carries a different connotation in Spanish. When he was on a yearlong mission trip to Honduras, he learned “the best compliment you could pay someone was not to say inteligente—nobody said that about me, intelligent…It was to say they were listo, that they were ready.” He explained that being ready “is more than just on time; it means well prepared.”

He also made sure to highlight that while he’ll never match Elizabeth Warren’s vitriol against Trump, he wouldn’t be shy about going negative if he were to join the Democratic ticket. He questioned Trump’s judgment on foreign policy and attacked Trump U, lobbing such one-liners as:

  • “If you want the ‘You’re-fired president,’ well, you have a choice. But we’re making a different choice. We want a ‘You’re-hired president.'”
  • “Do you want a trash-talking president, or a bridge-building president?”
  • “Donald Trump trash-talks women, he trash-talks people with disabilities, he trash-talks Latinos. To him it doesn’t matter if you are an illegal immigrant or you’re a worker who’s been here a long time or a DREAMer, or if you’re a Latina governor of New Mexico or a federal judge. If you’re a Latino he’s going to trash-talk you. He trash-talks faiths, like Muslims.”
  • “Do you want a ‘me-first president,’ or a ‘kids-and-family-first president?'”

Was this soaring eloquence? Hardly. But it showed a temperament that’s well-matched for Clinton herself. As I explained last week in a profile of Kaine, both politicians see themselves as being personally progressive but are more concerned with finding common ground to move policy forward. They are both Midwesterners who eschew lofty campaign rhetoric. And while some of Kaine’s one-liners might be groan-inducing, they pair well with Clinton’s own occasionally awkward presence on the stump. “I don’t know who created Pokemon Go,” Clinton said in her speech following Kaine, “but I’m trying to figure out how we get them to Pokemon Go to the polls.”

Get ready for a campaign full of awkward baby-boomer jokes if Clinton chooses Tim Kaine as her running mate.

WHO DOESN’T LOVE A POSITIVE STORY—OR TWO?

“Great journalism really does make a difference in this world: it can even save kids.”

That’s what a civil rights lawyer wrote to Julia Lurie, the day after her major investigation into a psychiatric hospital chain that uses foster children as “cash cows” published, letting her know he was using her findings that same day in a hearing to keep a child out of one of the facilities we investigated.

That’s awesome. As is the fact that Julia, who spent a full year reporting this challenging story, promptly heard from a Senate committee that will use her work in their own investigation of Universal Health Services. There’s no doubt her revelations will continue to have a big impact in the months and years to come.

Like another story about Mother Jones’ real-world impact.

This one, a multiyear investigation, published in 2021, exposed conditions in sugar work camps in the Dominican Republic owned by Central Romana—the conglomerate behind brands like C&H and Domino, whose product ends up in our Hershey bars and other sweets. A year ago, the Biden administration banned sugar imports from Central Romana. And just recently, we learned of a previously undisclosed investigation from the Department of Homeland Security, looking into working conditions at Central Romana. How big of a deal is this?

“This could be the first time a corporation would be held criminally liable for forced labor in their own supply chains,” according to a retired special agent we talked to.

Wow.

And it is only because Mother Jones is funded primarily by donations from readers that we can mount ambitious, yearlong—or more—investigations like these two stories that are making waves.

About that: It’s unfathomably hard in the news business right now, and we came up about $28,000 short during our recent fall fundraising campaign. We simply have to make that up soon to avoid falling further behind than can be made up for, or needing to somehow trim $1 million from our budget, like happened last year.

If you can, please support the reporting you get from Mother Jones—that exists to make a difference, not a profit—with a donation of any amount today. We need more donations than normal to come in from this specific blurb to help close our funding gap before it gets any bigger.

payment methods

WHO DOESN’T LOVE A POSITIVE STORY—OR TWO?

“Great journalism really does make a difference in this world: it can even save kids.”

That’s what a civil rights lawyer wrote to Julia Lurie, the day after her major investigation into a psychiatric hospital chain that uses foster children as “cash cows” published, letting her know he was using her findings that same day in a hearing to keep a child out of one of the facilities we investigated.

That’s awesome. As is the fact that Julia, who spent a full year reporting this challenging story, promptly heard from a Senate committee that will use her work in their own investigation of Universal Health Services. There’s no doubt her revelations will continue to have a big impact in the months and years to come.

Like another story about Mother Jones’ real-world impact.

This one, a multiyear investigation, published in 2021, exposed conditions in sugar work camps in the Dominican Republic owned by Central Romana—the conglomerate behind brands like C&H and Domino, whose product ends up in our Hershey bars and other sweets. A year ago, the Biden administration banned sugar imports from Central Romana. And just recently, we learned of a previously undisclosed investigation from the Department of Homeland Security, looking into working conditions at Central Romana. How big of a deal is this?

“This could be the first time a corporation would be held criminally liable for forced labor in their own supply chains,” according to a retired special agent we talked to.

Wow.

And it is only because Mother Jones is funded primarily by donations from readers that we can mount ambitious, yearlong—or more—investigations like these two stories that are making waves.

About that: It’s unfathomably hard in the news business right now, and we came up about $28,000 short during our recent fall fundraising campaign. We simply have to make that up soon to avoid falling further behind than can be made up for, or needing to somehow trim $1 million from our budget, like happened last year.

If you can, please support the reporting you get from Mother Jones—that exists to make a difference, not a profit—with a donation of any amount today. We need more donations than normal to come in from this specific blurb to help close our funding gap before it gets any bigger.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate