If I ask you what you remember about the 2016 presidential campaign, what comes to mind? Perhaps the shock, late on Election Night, as that New York Times needle didn’t flip toward a Hillary Clinton victory but kept inching closer and closer to a projection of Donald Trump becoming the 45th president. Or perhaps you first remember Trump bulldozing his way through the GOP primaries. Or maybe you most vividly recall Trump’s “because you’d be in jail,” quip during the debate, or the Access Hollywood tape, or the late revelations from then–FBI director James Comey.
My guess is you don’t remember much about Tim Kaine. In fact, you may have forgotten that the Virginia senator was Hillary Clinton’s running mate. The 2016 election was immensely consequential, discussed to death, debated to death . . . and yet the Democratic running mate amounted to an afterthought, or a footnote.
Eight years later, America watched another relatively obscure blue-state Democrat with a “nice guy” reputation named Tim flounder on a debate stage.
It’s easily forgotten, but back in 2016, Democrats felt that their vice-presidential nominee was too conciliatory to Donald Trump’s running mate, Mike Pence. The crowd at the Guardian declared Pence the winner. Vox lamented that Kaine was trying to win an argument, while Pence was winning the audience. The Washington Post concluded that Kaine looked “over-rehearsed” and was “trying too hard.” Three writers for the Los Angeles Times concurred that Kaine seemed “canned and, at times, overly exuberant.”
Kaine and Walz didn’t precisely mirror each other but similarly left Democrats underwhelmed, and frustrated that Trump’s running mate came across as so “normal.”
The experience of Kaine offers some good news for Walz. If Kamala Harris becomes the second woman to lose a presidential election to Donald Trump, Walz is not likely to be the scapegoat. (Although notice even Saturday Night Live did a joke about Harris saying she wished she had picked “Josh,” seemingly referring to Pennsylvania governor Josh Shapiro, before revealing she wished she had picked Josh Cellars brand cabernet. That’s an indicator that everyone’s looking at the razor-thin polling in Pennsylvania and realizing that Shapiro probably would have been a bigger help.)
The bad news for Walz is that if Harris does not win, he’s likely to return to Minnesota and quickly disappear from the national scene. Kaine reportedly took the 2016 defeat hard, and decided to refocus his efforts on his Senate work. While you couldn’t find many, or any, Democrats blaming Kaine for the 2016 outcome, few clamored for Kaine to return as a leader of the party.
In 2019, Washingtonian magazine wrote a profile titled, “Why No One Seems to Be Talking About Tim Kaine Anymore,” and Kaine told the magazine, “I don’t aspire to be a celebrity senator.” That’s good, because there’s no sign Democrats wanted him in that role.
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