Rust belt Democrats respond to Tim Kaine's everyman appeal

The morning after Hillary Clinton and Tim Kaine wrapped up their three-day bus tour through the rust belt, the vice-presidential candidate and his wife brought doughnuts for the staff and volunteers working at the campaign’s Richmond office.

“You can hear my voice is a little shot,” Kaine said on Monday morning. By day two of the tour, Kaine was struggling to squeak through his remarks.

In the 10 days since Kaine joined the Democratic ticket, he and his wife have been thrown into the national spotlight of a remarkable election year with little time to adjust. Despite the sore throat and lack of sleep, Kaine seems to be genuinely enjoying his role as Clinton’s chief cheerleader and character witness.

“For us to just be sitting on a bus shooting the breeze with Hillary and Bill Clinton, I mean, I gotta tell ya, I’m still sort of pinching myself,” Kaine told a small crowd of union workers at a factory in Johnstown. He heaped praise on Hillary Clinton at each stop, never forgetting to mention how “humbled” he is to be sharing a ticket with such a “remarkable leader” and “great public servant”.

But the starry-eyed approach to his new role belies the fact that he has been in the national spotlight before, as a candidate vetted for Obama’s vice-presidential pick in 2008 and as the chairman of the Democratic National Committee from 2009 to 2011. And his “aw shucks” delivery can sometimes provide cover for harsh criticism.

“Oh my gosh! The Republican convention was like a twisted and negative tour,” Kaine said at a rally in Philadelphia the morning after the Democratic convention. “It wasn’t a tour of this country. It was a journey through Donald Trump’s mind, and that is a very frightening place, a very frightening place.”

Across the rust belt over the past few days, crowds seemed to respond to Kaine’s everyman appeal and midwestern roots. When asked about him, several voters eagerly recited back his biography, and appeared particularly impressed that he speaks Spanish, learned during his year spent as a Catholic missionary in Honduras.

“He’s so sweet,” said Jean Ussery of Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. “He’s really good at getting people to listen and he seems really genuine. I hope people can see that.”

Trust

In his speech at the Democratic national convention last week, Kaine offered a powerful defense of his running mate, who has struggled to convince America that she is trustworthy. Kaine mentioned that his son, Nat, is a US marine serving in Europe. “I trust Hillary Clinton with our son’s life,” Kaine said.

In the same speech, the senator also attempted a Donald Trump impersonation, earning himself the reputation as a cracker of dad jokes, a characterization the father of three embraces. “I am boring,” Kaine once quipped about himself.

“I love that about him,” Clinton has said.

At the factory in Johnstown, Kaine joked that the only downside to joining the Democratic ticket is that it has put him in Trump’s crosshairs. He said he was hurt when Trump said he was a lousy governor of New Jersey.

“When you work hard in public life, and then somebody trashes your record, you feel bad. I was feeling bad for a few minutes, and I thought, ‘Wait a minute, I wasn’t governor of New Jersey,’” the former governor of Virginia said, drawing loud laughs.

He repeated the joke in Youngstown, but added an extra jab: “Look, you’ve got to give Donald a break. He’s new to this thing. So 50 states, and Virginia is different than New Jersey … this whole thing is a big civics lesson for him.”

With the exception of a few minor slip-ups – publicly referencing a meeting with labor leaders that the press had not been aware of, for example – Kaine’s transition to VP candidate appears to have been somewhat smoother than that of his Republican counterpart, Mike Pence.

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Trump and his running mate have publicly disagreed over the Republican nominee’s immigration platform, which would bar Muslims from entering the US. On Sunday, he attempted to rectify disparaging comments Trump made about the family of an American soldier who was killed in combat.

By contrast, Clinton and Kaine exhibited what seemed an easy rapport throughout the tour and in media interviews. They are said to share an interest in policy detail and have referred to each other as workhorses rather than showhorses.

Nevertheless, Kaine has some way to go to build bridges with progressive voters who were disappointed Clinton did not pick a running mate with a more liberal record, such as the Massachusetts senator Elizabeth Warren or the Ohio senator Sherrod Brown. Trump has seized on the tepid response from the left, and called it a “slap in the face” to Vermont senator Bernie Sanders and his supporters.

An outspoken advocate of free trade, Kaine voted for “fast track” promotion authority to finalize the Trans Pacific Partnership, an international trade deal that was a key point of contention between Sanders and Clinton. At the convention, hundreds of Democrats wore signs and chanted “No TPP” in opposition to the deal.

On the trail in the rust belt, where Trump is hoping to capitalize on the anti-trade and anti-Wall Street sentiment, Kaine noted that the TPP would not survive in a Clinton administration. But their change of course on the issue has still left some Democrats skeptical.

The Clintons and the Kaines rode part of the way together onboard the light blue bus wrapped with the campaign’s slogan, Stronger Together. They shared a late night pizza after leaving a rally in Youngstown, which started two hours late. As the bus rolled toward Cleveland, Kaine pulled out his harmonica.

Kaine’s addition to the ticket has also brought a reshuffle of Clinton’s playlist, which usually blares before and after her campaign events. Instead of walking out to the Rachel Platten pop anthem Fight Song, the Clintons and Kaines took the stage to the R&B classic Ain’t No Mountain High Enough.

At each event, Kaine introduced his wife, Anne Holton, a former legal aid lawyer and Virginia education secretary, who, like Bill Clinton, for the most part, did not have a speaking role on the trip. But by Saturday night, Holton appeared to be more comfortable onstage, dancing and singing along with Marvin Gaye and Tammi Terrell.

“Having her on the road with me makes me a very happy warrior,” Kaine said at the final stop in Columbus on Sunday.

In Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, one week after he got the call, Kaine reflected on the moment Clinton phoned him, after a three-month vetting process and a meeting at the Clintons’ home in Washington DC.

“When Hillary Clinton called me precisely one week ago at 7.32[pm] – but I mean, who’s counting – 7.32ish, to ask if I would be part of this ticket, I was just stunned and humbled and so excited,” Kaine said.

Kaine was at a Rhode Island shipyard fundraising for his Senate colleague, Jack Reed, when the former secretary of state called. He and his wife were met by Clinton’s campaign chairman, John Podesta, and were quickly ferried to a plane bound for Miami.

When Clinton took the microphone, she returned the compliment. “I think I made the right choice when I called Tim Kaine last week at 7.32,” she said drawing loud applause and cheers. “Tim and Anne have become great partners already.”