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Why Tim Kaine Is a Smart Strategic Choice for Hillary's VP

Why Tim Kaine Is a Smart Strategic Choice for Hillary's VP
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What strategic value does Tim Kaine bring to the Clinton campaign? originally appeared on Quora - the knowledge sharing network where compelling questions are answered by people with unique insights.

Answer by Terrence Yang, 2008 Obama elector, delegate, AAPI finance co-chair, on Quora:

(Feel free to skip this part on votes and money. I wrote it because I feel it informs my answer on Kaine's strategic value.)

  • First, let's be real clear on what wins elections: Votes and money. Period. The purpose of money is to swing the swing voters in the swing states all the way to your side so they actually vote for your candidate. You would use money to pay for all the persuasion techniques you can afford. By swing voter, I mean not just voters deciding between Hillary, Trump, and maybe one or two of the other candidates (Green Party, Libertarian), but also voters deciding between voting and not voting at all. If you're having a bad day, didn't get any sleep, you're worried about keeping your job, etc., are you really going to show up to vote? Maybe not! And if you are running a political campaign, you want to get those "maybe I'll vote for your candidate and maybe I'll just stay home" voters to show up and pull the lever for your candidate on Election Day (or complete and mail in their absentee ballots -- in each case after registering to vote of course).
  • You need money to pay for ads and -- these days -- to run a lot of tests and analytics to successfully reach, persuade, and turn out swing voters in swing states (including on TV and social media) and to pay for people to go door to door to swing states to find and visit the same voter with the same staffer or volunteer at least 3 times* before they will swing your way (if you can swing them at all).
  • You even need to pay for vans to help transport voters who support your candidate from their homes to their voting booths. All that requires a ton of cash.

Now to answer your question head-on:

  • More Money. As Obama's DNC Chair for over two years, Tim Kaine was basically Obama's fundraiser-in-chief. This gives Tim great access to Obama's biggest donors and fundraisers, not all of whom are also big Hillary supporters. Kaine being a VP helps Hillary raise more money sooner from Obama's big donors and fundraisers at the margin.
  • More Money is one of two keys (along with "More Votes" see way down below). I can't believe the mainstream press isn't talking about this much more. All the press seems to be saying so far is President Obama endorsed Tim Kaine, and Kaine was an early endorser of Obama. That said, Politico has a good piece on Kaine's close ties to Obama and his top staffers and advisors. This is another plus for Hillary.
  • Obama and his top advisors trusted Kaine for DNC Chair, an incredibly important, under-rated, misunderstood job. And a job Kaine was great at, by all accounts, and did for over two years. As an early supporter of Obama when Kaine was governor and then DNC Chairman, Kaine interacted with Obama on a substantive basis more than all the other viable VP candidates combined. It just seems like a longer, deeper relationship. And I wouldn't be surprised if members of Secretary Clinton's camp signaled to members of the President's camp that they'd like the President to endorse Kaine. It's kind of a trial balloon, to see how people react. If the results were bad, Secretary Clinton could always pick someone else.
  • A friend of mine was a big Obama donor and fundraiser. He loved Tim Kaine. Why? Because Tim was respectful and smart. One example I am comfortable sharing is a time when he would ask my friend what to do when a certain problem arose that my friend was on a presidential committee of. My friend said "I think we should do X" and Tim would go ahead and do "X". Surprisingly, powerful people like it when others do what they suggest. I'm not powerful like my friend and I hate it when political types ask me for my advice on things like "Should I run for ABC office?" and I say, "No because it's too late," and they run anyway. Why even ask me? Don't BS me to make me feel important. And of course that guy lost, as I predicted he would. Contrast that with how Tim behaves (AFAIK -- happy to hear stories to the contrary). Tim did the opposite. He really wanted to know what my friend thought.
  • Anyway, so Tim does X. Then someone who was also influential complained to Tim about X. So Tim went back to my friend and said something like "So-and-so complained about X. What do I do now?" in a good-hearted way. And authentically. My friend came up with a fix. It made sense. Tim did what my friend said to do. Again. And it worked. Everyone was okay or reasonably happy with the result.
  • Authenticity. News flash (not): There's a lot of BS in politics. But the good ones not only seem authentic. They are authentic. Like Tim Kaine. You're raising money or seeking endorsements from some of the most accomplished people in the world. These are major players in business, entertainment, law, medicine, finance, etc. They don't f**k around. Do you know what the most common response I got from folks like Paul Volcker was when I told them I was an Obama classmate? They'd say something like "Your classmate Obama seems authentic to me. [But -- the but was always implied] is he really?" Tim Kaine is viewed as authentic. Probably because he really is [I don't know him. I just have that sense from everything folks have said about him -- and from his excellent Quora answers and watching him on TV].
  • Does Not Cost the Democrats a Senate Seat. Tim leaving his U.S. Senate seat from Virginia to be a VP candidate means Virginia governor Terry McAuliffe, a Democrat, will replace Kaine's Senate Seat with -- you guessed it -- a Democrat. Contrast this with Warren, Brown of Ohio, and Booker, all Senators from states with a Republican governor who would replace them with -- surprise -- a Republican U.S. Senator.
  • Virginia, Florida. I don't see Kaine as a huge value in delivering Virginia because Hillary beats Trump (or tied in 2 cases) in every single poll in Virginia so far. RealClearPolitics - Election 2016 - Virginia: Trump vs. Clinton
  • I think Virginia is left-leaning. Kaine certainly helps seal the deal there. But Virginia isn't a real battleground state in the sense that Iowa, Ohio, Pennsylvania, or Florida are. That's why tomorrow Secretary Clinton is announcing her VP pick formally in Florida (a real swing state), not Virginia, where Tim's from. Think about that. If Virginia was a real swing state, wouldn't Hillary make her first appearance with her brand new VP pick in Tim's home state instead of Florida?
  • Also, I would not be surprised if a lot of former NY/NJ/CT donors and voters who love Tim Kaine now live in Florida. They might not be that jazzed about Hillary. She's just not that popular with some older voters with money. But they like Tim. And Tim is fluent in Spanish. That's a big potential plus in Florida, especially among non-Cuban Hispanics.
  • More Net Votes. I think Kaine gets Hillary more net votes than any other VP candidate and I think Hillary thinks so too. That's in part because more money equals more votes, all else being equal. Unless you are someone who is a master at persuasion like Trump. He could spend $55 million of his own money and fund his campaign and get record turnouts. Unlike Sanders. Sanders didn't really win more when voter turnout in the primaries was high. None Democratic primary voter turnout was only slightly higher than in 2008 in the caucus states. More importantly, Democratic primary turnout in 2016 was substantially lower than in 2008 among non-caucus states. Whose fault is that? Let's see. Clinton was in both 2008 and 2016. So the difference is: Sanders replaced Obama! Sanders is not great at getting the vote out compared to Clinton -- who Sanders lost to -- or Obama. I don't care whose fault that is. I just care about whether Sanders can get the vote out. You have to get the vote out. I also don't care that people support Sanders 9:1 over Hillary or Kaine or whatever on Quora or Twitter. Or that Sanders and Warren have bigger rallies. That's not what counts. What counts is votes at the polls. Or, more accurately, what counts is voting at the polls (or sending in absentee ballots) in swing states (and, to a lesser extent, near-swing states).
  • So I'm not sure why a pick like Sanders or even Warren would necessarily do well in the general election. It might. It might not.
  • And you know who got a record number of votes? Donald Trump, during the GOP primary. That's gotta be scary to Clinton. Many of Trump's voters are perceived as crazy racists** to the establishment. Pence offsets that and so does Trump's family (I find Ivanka Trump and Donald Trump Jr. particularly impressive.)
  • But Trump's personality is so dominant that I think he still scares the establishment, even with his emphasis on law and order (because he's also emphasizing things like nationalism, isolationism, and disengagement from the rest of the world).
  • So it makes sense Hillary would pick Tim Kaine. Kaine -- like Hillary -- is acceptable to the establishment. Establishment folks don't want populists running the country and vice-versa. Clinton picking Warren or Sanders would be risky because you'd be alienating not just Wall Street money, but Fortune 500 money, Silicon Valley money, real estate money and "old money".
  • And a pick like Warren or Sanders would alienate a ton of independent and moderate voters (including RINOs). All without any evidence whatsoever that the young, progressive vote and Latinos will turn out in droves to make up for that loss in swing states. That's a big risk.
  • Strategically, I think Secretary Hillary Clinton made a great decision to pick Tim Kaine, who has far greater appeal to true independent voters and left-leaning independent voters. These are some of the people who are voting in droves for Trump during the GOP primary (the others being crazy racists** but they are never voting for Hillary anyway, though they'll be more likely to turn out to vote against her and for Trump if Hillary picked a super liberal candidate who stridently supports #BlackLivesMatter and not at all #BlueLivesMatter. You can't be seen as pro-cop killer and win. That's not happening. And Trump has been pounding at Hillary and BLM for incendiary rhetoric that helped activate these psychos to go out and shoot police officers to death.)
  • Some of these independents need to vote in droves for Hillary. Because both Hillary and Tim are well-respected -- if the Clinton campaign and their advocates can successfully paint Trump/Pence as the "crazy racist"** law & order candidacy that has no idea how to work with our allies and frenemies (hi Saudi Arabia!), then they are going to discourage establishment Republicans from supporting Trump/Pence. Some will vote for Hillary too. It's not just Hank Paulson.
  • I hope readers realize that political people operate in tribes. That's also true in much of life, for better or worse.
  • Here's an example of how tribalism works in politics: At some point in 2011, I would hear the exact same thing at about the exact same time from my establishment Republican and establishment independent friends. Suddenly, they all said, "I support Romney. I think Romney would make a great President."
  • What? Did these friends suddenly become a bunch of fricking robots? The wording was like exactly the same each time! And they were telling me this unsolicited. So weird! I think that meant they and many others were saying it to a lot of people. These people weren't even in the same social circles.
  • So when I heard a successful establishment Republican friend say to me in April (well, I cornered him at a social event and said basically, "What the heck is going on with your party and Trump?" He said that he was Never Trump and would vote for Hillary over Trump. I was surprised. But shortly after, I guessed (correctly) that the Bush family (my friend worked an important job in one of the Bush administrations) would not support Trump and that some of their lieutenants would openly support Hillary at some point (which is exactly what people like Hank Paulson did).

    • *Unless things changed, Howard Dean said this to a few dozen of us in person in 2008. It was a free event!

    ** Scott Adams' Blog

    Disclaimer: I have a friendly wager where I win some money if Hillary is President on January 20, 2017. Otherwise I'm out some money.

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