“The experience is different, but the people are the same,” he said.

And to Kaine, the people he has met on the road want the same things.

“The economic issue of an economy that works for everybody, not just a few, is really important,” he said. “There are people who don’t see the path for themselves, so that’s going to be the biggest burden on our shoulders, if we have the opportunity to govern.

“People do want healing, they do want some positivity, they do want some optimism,” he continues. “They don’t like just the divisive tearing everything down. I think Hillary and I know that — we try to campaign that way, but if we win, (we) have got to govern that way. We’ve got to make people to feel like everyone has a seat at the table.”

It is perhaps the central theme to Kaine’s stump speech, something that seems less the product of focus-group testing at Clinton headquarters and more the organic evolution of Kaine as a person: from Honduras missionary to civil rights lawyer to politician.

That is, on the road, Kaine is speaking to the people on the side of the road.