Why President Obama and Tim Kaine "Feel the Bern"

Full speech: Tim Kaine at the Democratic National Convention

President Barack Obama speaks at the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia. (Reuters / Gary Cameron)

PhiladelphiaPresident Obama and Democratic vice-presidential nominee Tim Kaine did something very smart Wednesday night.Ad Policy

They talked about Bernie Sanders. Indeed, they talked up Bernie Sanders.

The crowd at the Democratic National Convention, which has not always cheered in unison this week, cheered robustly when the president declared:

Democracy works, but we gotta want itnot just during an election year, but all the days in between.

So if you agree that theres too much inequality in our economy, and too much money in our politics, we all need to be as vocal and as organized and as persistent as Bernie Sanders supporters have been. We all need to get out and vote for Democrats up and down the ticket, and then hold them accountable until they get the job done.

The references to Sanders came from a president and a Democratic nominee for vice president who devoted substantial portions of their speeches to hailing Hillary Clinton, the partys nominee for president. Obama andKaine were not objecting to the fact that Clinton beat the senator from Vermont for the nomination, and that tomorrow night she will deliver her acceptance speech.

Rather, they were acknowledging that the passionately progressive campaign that Sanders ran this year secured more than 13 million votes, won 23 primary and caucus contests, and brought almost 1,900 delegates to the convention floor.

Obama and Kaine know that Sanders accomplished something this year.

They are certainly aware that recognizing this accomplishment could help in the work of pulling together a party that is still struggling to achieve unity.

Kainethe centrist former governor and senator from Virginia who was certainly not the first choice of most Sanders backers for the vice-presidential nominationmentioned Sanders early in his speech. Noting that he serves on the Senate Budget Committee with Sanders, the Virginian described the Vermonter as an ally in the critical work of finding resources for education and health-care projects. When that line drew a loud cheer, Kaine ad-libbed a line that was not in his prepared text: We all should feel the Bern and we all should not want to get burned by the other guy!

That was one of the nights many jabs at Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump. But it was also a grasp at party unity.

What Obama and Kaine did Wednesday night was rare. Most speakers at this convention, even speakers who have for many years served in the House of Representatives and the Senate with Sanders, have failed to mention his name in their speeches to the convention. That is, of course, their rhetorical right. But it is not necessarily wise politics when so many of the delegates and alternates and guests at this convention arrived as Sanders backers.

Obama is a very wise politician, as is Kaine. Both men understand that there are a lot of people in this convention hall who would like to cheer a few more times for Bernie Sanders.

Kaine actually gave them several opportunities to cheer.

LIKE THIS? GET MORE OF OUR BEST REPORTING AND ANALYSIS

Mixing English and Spanish, as he does so ably, Kaine said: Hillary Clinton and I are compaeros del alma. We share this basic belief, its simple: Do all the good you can. Serve one another. Thats what Im about. Thats what youre about. Thats what Bernie Sanders is about. Thats what Joe and Jill Biden are about. Thats what Barack and Michelle Obama are about. And thats what Hillary Clinton is about.

Kaine put Bernie Sandersthe outsider, the insurgent, the champion of a political revolutionin the company of Clinton, the Bidens, and the Obamas.

That is a small measure of the influence Bernie Sanders has had on American politics.

A few minutes after Kaine, President Obama provided a greater measure of that influence, when he responded to cheers for his own reference to Sanders by smiling broadly and declaring: Thats right: Feel the Bern!

Source: http://news.google.com/news/url?sa=t&fd=R&ct2=us&usg=AFQjCNHHuTqhZaQi2M1eqG2BpH02mWWdNQ&clid=c3a7d30bb8a4878e06b80cf16b898331&cid=52779167203450&ei=-jmaV6icDsLR3QH3jqmoCg&url=https://www.thenation.com/article/why-president-obama-and-tim-kaine-feel-the-bern/

Continue Reading ..

Tim Kaine can speak Spanish. But most Hispanics don"t care.

Hillary Clinton chooses Tim Kaine as VP pick

This years fight to become vice president included talk in both parties about the age, gender, height, weight and marital history of various contenders. On the Democratic side, it also focused for he first time on whether certain potential running mates could speak Spanish.

Presidential candidate Hillary Clinton considered two Latino contenders for vice president, Housing and Urban Development Secretary Julian Castro and Labor Secretary Tom Perez, and ultimately chose Virginia Sen. Timothy M. Kaine in part because hes fluent in Spanish.

That linguistic mastery factored in at all is a testament to the growing clout of the Latino electorate. But the idea that Castro and Perez would have struggled to woo Latino voters because they dont speak Spanish as confidently as Kaine advanced primarily by non-Hispanic news organizations and political consultants reflects a deep misunderstanding of a fast-growing voting bloc.

Such talk drives me nuts, said Chuck Rocha, Democratic political consultant who was a senior adviser to the presidential campaign of Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.).

A self-described third generation Texas Mexican, Rocha said that Clintons decision to pass over Castro and Perez stung because, I was looking for a VP choice that showed my son that one day he could be president not that he needs to work on his Spanish.

[Once again, Hispanics were considered for VP. Once again, theyre expecting to be passed over.]

He added, Remember, we are talking about Latino voters not the general population, and the vast majority of Latino voters do not speak Spanish as a first language.

Castro, a Mexican American, and Perez, a Dominican American, grew up in pockets of the country where Spanish isnt necessarily the norm. Kaine, born in Minnesota and a Virginia politician, learned Spanish while serving as a missionary in Central America.

To be sure, Kaine won the veep slot for non-linguistic reasons. Amid a wave of terror attacks at home and abroad, Clinton deemed national security and foreign affairs experience critical. Those are big professional blind spots for Castro and Perez, while Kaines Senate term has included time on the armed services and foreign relations committees. His term as Virginia governor also gives him significant executive experience.

Introduced by Clinton to a predominantly Hispanic crowd in Miami on Saturday, Kaine beamed as he delivered several dutiful lines in Spanglish.

He said that he and Clinton would be Companeros de alma in this great lucha ahead soulmates in this great fight ahead. While serving as a missionary in Honduras, he said he aprend los valores, de mi pueblo: fe, familia y trabajo. Los mismos valores de la comunidad latina aqu, learned the values of my town: faith, family and work. The same values of the Latino community here.

Soy Catolico, he mentioned later Im Catholic.

[Kaine sought to boost Kaine brand after being passed over for VP in 2008]

But nearly seven in 10 Latinos said that a candidates Spanish fluency wont influence their vote, according to a poll conducted last year for the Spanish-language network Univision. Barely a quarter said it will.

An overwhelming majority of Latinos 95 percent believe its important for future generations to speak Spanish, but seven in 10 Latino adults dont believe its necessary to speak the language to be considered Latino, according to a study released in February by the nonpartisan Pew Research Center.

Analyzing U.S. Census Bureau data, Pew determined in January that Hispanic millennials are poised to be nearly half of the nearly 28 million eligible Hispanic voters expected to vote in November. These younger voters dont just watch Univision, listen to Spanish music or play soccer. They dominate school systems in Arizona, California and Texas, but increasingly dominate pockets of Georgia, Massachusetts, North Carolina and Rhode Island.

For younger Hispanics like this reporter speaking Spanish is not a litmus test for Latinidad, or Latin identity. Being Hispanic is increasingly about growing up in certain kinds of communities, understanding what its like to have one or two immigrant parents and roots in more than one country. Many Latinos call the struggle nideaquinidealla a term that strings together several words to mean, not from here, nor from there.

Perez, 54, grew up in Buffalo, far from larger centers of Hispanic activity in the 1960s. He speaks Spanish in public occasionally sometimes delivering Spanish versions of President Obamas Saturday morning radio address.

Castro, 41, grew up in San Antonio as a multi-generational Mexican-American, a sub-group that is less likely to speak Spanish at home given its deeper roots in the United States. On the stump, Castro might quickly speak a few words in Spanish, but he doesnt sit for Spanish-only interviews.

Given his higher profile, Castros language skills came under intense scrutiny over the course of the vice presidential guessing game. In a Politico profile published last year, a Democratic operative claimed anonymously that Tim Kaine speaks Spanish much better than Julin Castro does. The New York Post gossip pages claimed in May that Castro and his twin brother, Rep. Joaquin Castro (D-Tex.) were cramming with Rosetta Stone a charge they angrily denied.

Freddy Balsera, a Miami-based political consultant who crafted Spanish-language advertising for Obamas 2008 campaign, said that focusing on a candidates language skills matters less to him because any use of the language is part pandering.

Gaining our support isnt as shallow as saying hola, playing some maracas and passing out tacos, he said. That is precisely why Hispanic political prominence has become so meaningful. We are making candidates work for our vote.

It would have a great source of pride to have a Hispanic on the ticket, but it is not just about that, he added, recalling that Republicans had a chance to nominate Sens. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.) and Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), who both speak Spanish, or former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, who learned to speak Spanish fluently from his Mexican-American wife.

I am positive that they would have had serious difficulties with Hispanic voters despite their heritage, Balsera said.

Thats a reference to the GOPs opposition to comprehensive immigration reform and increasingly absolutist stance on constructing a Mexican border wall. The party also nominated Donald Trump despite his attacks and mockery of Latino government officials and Mexican immigrants.

[From 2013: Tim Kaine voices support for immigration bill on Senate floor, entirely in Spanish]

Ana Navarro, a Nicaraguan-born former adviser to Bush and Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), tweeted on Friday that Clinton had chosen Kaine, a Spanish-speaking do-gooder who was a missionary in Honduras. Trumps Hispanic outreach, she tweeted, included the support of Joe Arpaio an ardently anti-immigrant Arizona sheriff and a taco bowl, referring to a controversial tweet Trump sent on Cinco de Mayo.

Make no mistake about it, Navarro tweeted on Saturday, @timkaine will be a h**l of a good surrogate for @HillaryClinton w/Hispanics. He gets it.

In 2013, Kaine, 58, became the first U.S. senator to deliver a Senate floor speech entirely in Spanish to voice full support for a comprehensive immigration reform bill.

As somebody who lived in Latin America and has a real passion and attachment to the immigrant story Latinos y otros, porque hay un gran numero de Asiticos y otros en Virginia [Latinos and others, because theres a big number of Asians and others in Virginia] its something I had been looking forward to doing, Kaine told The Washington Post after the speech.

He joked in the interview that despite his strong Spanish diction, Im definitely a gringo.

Source: http://news.google.com/news/url?sa=t&fd=R&ct2=us&usg=AFQjCNEE2h4rXloINv1t-0uIWDlxs4Gg9A&clid=c3a7d30bb8a4878e06b80cf16b898331&cid=52779163421948&ei=9uiUV5CqDIvL3QHzmo-gCg&url=https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/tim-kaine-can-speak-spanish-but-most-hispanics-dont-care/2016/07/24/9925fd74-510e-11e6-a7d8-13d06b37f256_story.html

Continue Reading ..

Clinton Camp"s Secret Plan to Announce Tim Kaine as Vice President

Hillary Clinton chooses Tim Kaine as VP pick

Unlike Donald Trump"s announcement of his running mate, Mike Pence, Hillary Clinton"s search for a running mate was a closely guarded secret.

Only a small team of aides were involved in the process and Clinton herself did not make her final decision about Virginia Sen. Tim Kaine until Friday morning -- the same day she made the announcement.

Once Clinton decided on Kaine, the campaign continued to go to great lengths -- concocting a secret plan that included riding in freight elevators and hiding in cars -- in order to keep the news from leaking.

Here is how the final hours of the mission played out early Friday evening, according to campaign aides.

Campaign chairman John Podesta, along with two others aides and a speechwriter, snuck out of their headquarters in Brooklyn using a freight elevator to avoid being seen as they traveled to Newport, Rhode Island, where Kaine was holding a nighttime fundraiser.

As Kaine spoke at his event, still unaware that he had been selected, Podesta waited in a parking lot of a nearby beach.

Meanwhile, around 7:05 p.m., Clinton had just finished a rally in Tampa and both she and Podesta began making calls to contenders who did not get the job.

Kaine and his aides had a hunch that a call from Clinton would be coming that evening and had hoped to return to their hotel first, but the swarm of reporters outside the fundraiser -- which was held at an old shipping yard -- prevented them from leaving. They scrambled to find a messy office space that was crowded with ropes and shipping equipment.

It was there that Kaine took the call from Clinton asking him to be her running mate

The two spoke for 15 to 20 minutes, during which Kaine learned of the campaign"s plan and was instructed to meet Podesta at the Viking Hotel.

The problem? Aides were concerned about how they could sneak Kaine out of the shipping yard without reporters seeing.

They briefly contemplated leaving on a boat, but nixed the idea. Ultimately Kaine was simply driven out in an unassuming Volvo.

Around this time -- at 8:11 p.m. -- the campaign made the official announcement on Twitter that Clinton had chosen Kaine.

Back at the hotel, Kaine"s wife, Anne, was waiting for him, along with Podesta, who gave him a briefing and handed over a copy of his speech for the campaign rally with Clinton he would appear at on Saturday in Miami.

Kaine decided not to return home to Richmond that night and instead flew directly to Miami. He had packed an extra outfit, thinking he would be fundraising the next day in Nantucket.

Around 10:45 p.m., before taking off, Kaine received a phone call from President Obama.

Once in flight, Kaine and his team popped some champagne to celebrate. Kaine also worked on his speech.

The next morning, the Virginia senator received a policy briefing from senior campaign aides and then met privately with Clinton.

The reason, aides say, the two were over an hour late to their Miami rally was because the newly-minted running mates couldn"t stop chatting.

Source: http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/clinton-camps-secret-plan-announce-tim-kaine-vice/story?id%3D40827030

Continue Reading ..

Young Hispanic voters don"t care that Tim Kaine speaks Spanish

FOX NEWS LIVE STREAM: Kaine makes campaign debut amid backlash from the left

Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton has tapped Virginia senator Tim Kaine as her running mate. And as the presumptive nominee is quick to point out, hes a fluent Spanish speaker.

But the initial response from politically engaged young Hispanics in the USa crucial constituency for the Democratsis pretty uniform.

Y qu?

So what?

Beaten down by policy defeats under Barack Obamas Democratic administration, which deported more immigrants than those before it, the youth movement pushing hard for immigration reform remains disillusioned and cynical. They call themselves DREAMers, activists and supporters of the failed DREAM Act, a bill intended to offer a path to permanent residency for undocumented minors brought to the US by their parents.

Kaine may have given the first address to the US Senate entirely in Spanish, but until this youthful group of activists see political action, talk is cheap.

Tim Kaine is a conventional choice at an unconventional time, said Adam Luna, a spokesman for United We Dream. But immigrant youth know that we cant count on political leaders to dismantle the systems that oppress us without relentless pressure.

On Saturday (July 23), Clinton and Kaine appeared together at a rally in Miami at Florida International University. During his remarks, Kaine talkedin Spanish at timesabout his experiences working alongside carpenters in Honduras during the 1980s. He said that in Clintons first 100 days in the White House, she would lay out a comprehensive immigration reform package.

Many naturalized immigrants and children of immigrants arent drawn to Republican nominee Donald Trumps nativist campaign, but whether Democrats can drum up enthusiasm among this group to turn out in big numbers at the polls in November remains to be seen. Immigrants and supporters of immigration reform along the lines of the DREAM Act are crucial constituencies in swing states.

Its fine that he can speak Spanish but that doesnt matter to me.

Luna described Kaines immigration record in the senate as fairly standard as Democrats go, but noted this has done little to stop deportations under president Obama.

DREAMers said Kaines fluency might immediately appeal to their parents generationsome mentioned family members who were momentarily drawn to Republican senator Marco Rubio when he was still in the runningbut that Clinton and Kaine have a lot of work ahead of them if they hope to energize younger voters.

For myself, its like, okay cool, its fine that he can speak Spanish but that doesnt matter to me, said Mara Jaime, the 24-year-old board chair of the Hudson Valley Community Coalition in White Plains, New York. You can speak Spanish and still have terrible policies.

Jaime and others say seven years of false starts in the immigration-reform movement has taken its toll. One of the most crushing blows came last month, when the US Supreme Courtstill one justice short of its full nine-member complementvoted 4-4 to block (paywall) president Obamas executive orders that would have shielded up to 5 million undocumented immigrants from deportation, giving them a path to work legally in the US.

For Carolina Bortello, the 28-year-old lead coordinator of Connecticut Students for a Dream, some optimism could be injected into the DREAMer movement if Clinton and Kaine focus on scrapping and replacing the prison-industrial complex, which she describes as ripping segments of the immigrant community apart.

I dont think that just by naming him as [vice president] that it will draw more minority votes to her, Bortello says of Kaine. The only way that could happen is when he speaks about his policies, if he [opts] to make the presidents policies more friendly to immigrants in the US.

Source: http://qz.com/740486/young-hispanic-voters-dont-care-that-tim-kaine-speaks-spanish/

Continue Reading ..

Bill Clinton Said to Back Virginia"s Tim Kaine for Vice President

Senator Responds To Vice President Talk: "I Like My Job" | Morning Joe | MSNBC
Photo Hillary Clinton campaigned with Senator Tim Kaine, Democrat of Virginia, at Ernst Community Cultural Center in Annandale, Va., last week. Credit Doug Mills/The New York Times

As Hillary Clinton prepares to make her choice for a vice-presidential candidate, Bill Clinton has privately expressed his support for Senator Tim Kaine of Virginia, according to three Democrats briefed on the conversations with the former president this week.

Mr. Clinton believes that Mr. Kaine, 58, a former governor and member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, has the domestic and national security rsum that both appeals to voters and makes him prepared for the presidency.

In an interview with Charlie Rose of PBS on Monday, Mrs. Clinton said she was afflicted with the responsibility gene and would value experience and preparedness over any other calculations in choosing a No. 2.

In recent days, Mrs. Clinton narrowed down her pick, and she is likely to appear with her running mate Saturday at a rally in Florida, though she could announce her choice in advance of the campaign event in a text to supporters.

Tom Vilsack, the agriculture secretary; Thomas E. Perez, the secretary of labor; and James G. Stravidis, a retired four-star Navy admiral, remain contenders.

On Wednesday, Robby Mook, Mrs. Clintons campaign manager, invited Senator Elizabeth Warrens aides to the campaigns Brooklyn headquarters to discuss how the Massachusetts senator can be helpful in the coming months. That was interpreted by some people with knowledge of the process as a sign that Mrs. Clinton has settled on a choice.

Mr. Vilsack is currently scheduled to appear with Senator Claire McCaskill of Missouri in her home state on Thursday and Friday, though he could still cancel.

Heres how we analyzed the third night of the Republican National Convention, which featured Mike Pence, Ted Cruz and more.

People close to Mr. Clinton, who could discuss private conversations only without attribution, said that the former president had left the decision entirely to his wife and that he also has close relationships with Mr. Vilsack and Mr. Perez.

A spokesman for the Clinton campaign did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Democrats in contact with Mr. Kaine and his associates say their tone has shifted in recent days. After weeks of playing down their prospects of joining the Democratic ticket, the senator and his loyalists are becoming far more circumspect.

In 2008, Barack Obama considered picking Mr. Kaine as his running mate before selecting Senator Joseph R. Biden Jr., and on Wednesday the White House signaled that Mr. Obama would support Mr. Kaine on the ticket.

Virginia is a swing state that has been gravitating toward the Democrats in recent elections. In 2008, Mr. Obama defeated John McCain in Virginia by more than six percentage points, marking the first time since Lyndon B. Johnsons victory in 1964 that the state had voted for a Democratic presidential nominee.

An NBC News-Wall Street Journal poll from July 15 showed Mrs. Clinton beating Mr. Trump for the states 13 electoral votes by nine percentage points.

Advocates for Mr. Kaine are guardedly optimistic about his prospects, although Mr. Clinton has expressed some hesitation about the Virginia senator because of the risk of losing Mr. Kaines Senate seat to a Republican, according to two Democrats briefed on the deliberations.

Choosing Mr. Kaine could alter the balance of power in Congress should Democrats retake the Senate this year but gain a one-seat majority. While Gov. Terry McAuliffe of Virginia could appoint a Democrat to succeed Mr. Kaine next year, the seat would be up for grabs in a special election that would coincide with the states governor contest in November 2017.

With Republicans typically faring better in such off-off year elections, when turnout dips, Democrats could lose what was Mr. Kaines Senate seat just a year after Mrs. Clinton is sworn in, a political risk both the Clintons have been acutely aware of as they weighed the pros and cons of vice-presidential candidates.

Continue reading the main story

Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/21/us/politics/tim-kaine-bill-hillary-clinton-vp.html

Continue Reading ..