Progressives who are yapping critically about the choice of Tim Kaine as the vice presidential nominee are really showing the weakness of our wing of the party. His choice is actually not a bad thing for the future of the movement ignited by the Sanders campaign. In fact, in some respects, it’s a relief.
Roughly speaking, the rationale from the self-promotional quotes by progressives (some of whom really represent nobody other than themselves via some “astro-turfing” Internet list) is that by choosing a progressive running mate Hillary Clinton would be showing respect to the Sanders-aligned voters and her future intentions on policy. What rubbish.
In case you missed it, the vice president’s main job is to shut up while they use the post to get ready to run for president (George H.W. Bush), or as a capstone to a career (Joe Biden). Sure, they get a little commission or two to oversee (Al Gore’s “reinventing government”). But, the most significant decisions progressives will have to be ready to fight a Democratic Administration over are not going to be substantially emanating from the vice president’s office.
On the substance, Tim Kaine is, in fact, a pretty moderate, centrist Democrat who has supported very bad trade deals and is quite corporate-friendly. Indeed, I am happy to wave goodbye to him as a U.S. Senator, understanding that his replacement is unlikely to be more progressive. It’s also likely that perhaps in eight years, when he is just 66, he may be a leading contender for the Democratic nomination in 2024, if Hillary Clinton wins this year and serves a second term. That may indicate a fight down the road.
But, assuming a Democratic victory in November, progressives have big fights looming right now, not some hypothetical problem almost a decade from now. We have to defeat the Trans Pacific Partnership. Wages must be raised for working people, which means a royal battle will ensue to make sure raising the federal minimum wage to $15-an-hour—a position the Sanders movement forced into the Democratic Party platform—is taken seriously and advanced in short order. Wall Street will continue to try to weaken the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and resist calls to break up big banks. Urgent measures to address climate change will be met with a massive flow of carbon industry money that still pollutes the Democratic Party.
So, we should have a much different calculation about where we need advocates. Though I highly doubted it would happen, I was far more concerned that either Elizabeth Warren or Sherrod Brown would be chosen as running mates. There is a better than even chance that the Democrats will retake the majority in the Senate. If that happens, Chuck Schumer will be the body’s majority leader. Schumer, while certainly fairly progressive on most social issues, is not a reliable ally when it comes to beating up his donor base on Wall Street and is quite hawkish on foreign policy (he voted for the Iraq War and has been a one-sided, staunch advocate for Israel).
In a new Democratic majority in the Senate, Warren, Brown and Bernie Sanders could be a powerful progressive bloc, making legitimate claims based on seniority and experience, on a combination of the Banking, Budget and Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) committees. Those three committees alone effectively leverage issues that effect every single working person, from wages, unions rights, pensions and protection from the elites and Wall Street. That’s where progressive leaders should be, not having their voices muted to serve in the executive branch.
More important, spending a lot of time trying to win some completely meaningless gesture—the vice president’s slot—detracts from the lessons we should have learned over the past year. Many of the positions taken by the soon-to-be Democratic nominee, and, then, incorporated into the Democratic Party’s platform, were in direct contrast to positions she had held. Those include a new-found opposition to the death penalty and to the TPP and support—if a bit squishy—for the $15-an-hour federal minimum wage hike. Trust me, we are going to have battle royals with Democrats to make sure we continue to build on the progress of the Sanders political revolution.
What progressives have to continue to celebrate is that while the political calendar made it impossible to win the nomination (Sanders’ campaign basically took place over one year), we substantially won the debate over what the party should stand for. That happened by building powers among people, not by asking for token crumbs.
