The #Veep is out: Hillary Clinton chooses Tim Kaine as Vice President

Democratic Presidential nominee Hillary Clinton announced on Friday afternoon that her running mate will be Senator Tim Kaine of Virginia.

A senior campaign official gave word to the New York Times around 8:10 PM Eastern Time.

In selecting Kaine, Clinton aligns herself with a “battleground state politician with working-class roots and a fluency in Spanish, traits that she believes can bolster her chances to defeat Donald J. Trump in November.”

Asked whether Kaine is “boring,” Mrs. Clinton said “I love that about him.” She added, “He’s never lost an election.”

Don’t mess this one up you guys. Please don’t mess this up.

Democratic U.S. presidential candidate Hillary Clinton and U.S. Senator Tim Kaine (D-VA) react during a campaign rally at Ernst Community Cultural Center in Annandale, Virginia, U.S., July 14, 2016. REUTERS

From the New York Times:

In the end, Mrs. Clinton decided Mr. Kaine, 58, a former governor of Virginia who sits on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and speaks fluent Spanish, had the qualifications and background and the personal chemistry with her to make the ticket a success.

Mrs. Clinton had entertained more daring choices. She considered Thomas E. Perez, the secretary of labor, who would have been the first Hispanic on a major party ticket; Senator Cory Booker, of New Jersey, who would have been the first African-American to seek the vice presidency; and Adm. James G. Stavridis, a retired four-star Navy admiral who served as the supreme allied commander at NATO, but had never held elected office.

In the end, Mrs. Clinton, who told PBS she is “afflicted with the responsibility gene,” avoided taking a chance with a less experienced vice-presidential candidate and felt no political need to push the historic nature of her candidacy by adding another woman or a minority to the ticket.

Mrs. Clinton and Mr. Kaine have similar centrist positions on foreign policy, education and criminal justice and they are said to share an easy rapport and a love of granular policy-making. “I do have a fondness for wonks,” Mrs. Clinton said in the PBS interview.

Related, an analysis of the horrific fascist shitshow that was the Donald Trump branded Republican National Convention, at which Trump spoke last night. The Cleveland RNC was full of “ screaming matches, plagiarism and washed-up celebrities,” reports Time, and others in the news called it a “train wreck,” a “fiasco,” a “carnival,” and a “nuclear dumpster fire.”

This isn’t an analogy. It’s a huge gamble on the first truly 21st Century campaign. Technology has given exhibitionists and promoters the means to connect with large audiences and create in them a sense—largely unreal—that they are personally involved the promoter’s life. There is an intimacy and emotional investment that works on the level of drama, and it hooks people who aren’t connected to politics as previously practiced. The goal is to connect with citizens who weren’t on the radar: and Trump has been succeeding, according to the RAND Corporation. In an innovative survey taken this spring, RAND found that respondents who agreed with the idea that “people like me don’t have any say” were over 80 percent more likely to vote for Trump than for another Republican primary candidate.

Democratic U.S. presidential candidate Hillary Clinton and U.S. Senator Tim Kaine (D-VA) react during a campaign rally at Ernst Community Cultural Center in Annandale, Virginia, U.S., July 14, 2016. REUTERS