Faith, Kaine says, led him into public service, and it's important for public leaders to share what motivates them to be in public life.
"Why do you want to run for public office? I cannot answer that question without drawing on my faith and spirituality," Kaine said. "I wouldn't be doing this if it weren't for a commitment to serve other people, and that commitment to serve other people is rooted in a very fundamental thing--and that's my religion."
Kaine does not believe Democrats are a secular party:
Kaine dismisses claims by pundits, the media and Republicans that Democrats are a secular party.
"Who are Democratic voters? It's a whole lot of people to whom faith is critically important," he said. "No party has got a monopoly on vice or virtue--no party's got a monopoly on faith. But I'm not going to let the Democrats be painted as sort of the anti-faith party because it's just flat wrong."
That's the wrong dichotomy. It's not whether Democrats have faith or oppose faith. Of course most Democrats have faith. It's whether they believe their faith should be brought into politics and Government. On that, I say no. And as I asked this morning, what happens once we get all these evangelicals and religious voters into our party? Do we then modify our positions on issues to keep them?
On yet another level, Kaine helps Obama with four demographics: Virginians and their 13 electoral votes; Catholics, who were not among his key constituents during the primaries; evangelicals, who for some unknown reason, Obama and the Dems are hell-bent on bringing into our party; and Hispanics, another group luke-warm to Obama (Kaine was a missionary in Honduras and speaks fluent Spanish.)
At least Kaine personally opposes the death penalty, although he hasn't lifted a finger to end it and doesn't have a problem with carrying it out in Virginia. If he's consistent, then he also won't let his personal opposition to abortion get in the way of maintaining Roe v. Wade as the law of the land.
While a month ago, I preferred Kathleen Sebelius if Hillary wasn't going to be chosen, I can live with Kaine. I'll be rolling my eyes at all the faith-based talk -- and I'm not planning on attending any of those events in Denver -- but it's such a relief to me that it won't be Biden, I'll take what I can get at this point.
Obama-Kaine isn't an exciting ticket, but it's better than McCain and anyone he picks. It could be a better strategy for Obama than one in which he pins his hopes on iffy, smaller states like Nevada, NM and Colorado. He doesn't seem inclined to put great emphasis on the rural voters in big states like Ohio, Florida and Michigan, so maybe a combination of faith-based voters and gains among Hispanic voters will put him over the top in at least one of these critical big states.
It's pretty clear Obama doesn't care about what the netroots or progressives think of his choice. Other than his early focus on the War in Iraq, he's never paid as much attention to promoting progressive causes as he has to promoting his all-encompassing but amorphous philosophy of hope and change.
