David S. Bernstein is a contributing political analyst at WGBH News in Boston.

It hasn’t been uncommon to hear loyal Democrats—and even independents—wistfully mutter that they wish Joe Biden could just stay on as vice president. He’s a Democrat who speaks easily to some of the issues that galvanize Republicans. As his second term winds to a close, America’s “Uncle Joe” is enjoying a favorability rating of +15 in the RealClearPolitics average. In today’s ultrapartisan, anti-politician environment, that’s practically sainthood.

It was a foregone conclusion that Biden wouldn’t be back. But in choosing Virginia Senator Tim Kaine as her running mate, Hillary Clinton has come much closer than most people appreciate to offering America a third Joe Biden term.


Some big differences stand out. Biden was eight years older when he was tapped as Barack Obama’s running mate; he’s a rust-belt Scranton guy who lived most of his life in the Philadelphia-Wilmington region, while Kaine spent formative years in the Midwest before landing in the South. Perhaps most glaringly, by the time he became veep, Biden was already a national figure with two presidential campaigns under his belt. Kaine was, as he joked at his introduction, unknown to the national electorate—and, before this week, to much of the political media.

But on closer inspection, Kaine ticks off some of the same boxes as Biden. A senator from an inland Eastern seaboard city who is well-liked across the aisle? Check. A Roman Catholic whose personal abortion beliefs let him connect with people more conservative than the Democratic platform? Check. A boring white male and veteran Democratic Party team player campaigning for the lightning-rod historic top of the ticket? Check.

Deep parallels that suggest that Kaine could be as successful in a Clinton administration as Biden has been for Obama.

The comparison shouldn’t be stretched too far, certainly—and there’s one crucial difference in their appeal that matters deeply to the campaign this year. As Kaine prepares to hold the floor at the Democratic National Convention tonight, and introduces himself to his largest audience yet, he’ll face the challenge of matching Biden’s superpower: an instinctive ability to connect and empathize with the blue-collar anxiety that’s pulling Democrats toward the other party this year. Can Kaine go the full Biden? Only time will tell, but it’s worth considering the deep parallels that suggest Kaine could be as successful in a Clinton administration as Biden has been for Obama.

He’s Been a Jesuit from the Jump

The most obvious similarity between the two is their Catholic upbringing, and the mix of conservative personal morality and liberal social policy that stems from it.

Both come out of the Jesuit tradition, with its strong teachings on peace and justice. Both came to politics through careers in the law, helping the downtrodden: Biden as a public defender, Kaine representing victims of housing discrimination. And neither is shy about discussing how their Catholicism affects their political lives—as Kaine did in his debut speech as Clinton’s running mate Saturday in Miami. Listeners heard Kaine speak the Spanish he learned as a missionary in Honduras, during a year off from Harvard Law School. And they also heard him speak of learning the motto “men for others” in his Kansas City Jesuit high school. “It became like my North Star,” he said. “I knew I wanted to do something to devote myself to social justice.”

As with Biden, Kaine’s Catholic faith is not just a relic of his political biography; it’s also demonstrably part of his life. He attends St. Elizabeth Catholic Church on Richmond’s Northside, a predominantly black congregation that stresses “unity and diversity,” where he started a men’s study group; it’s the same church where he got married 30 years ago.

And Kaine has had to navigate a fine line between his personal Catholic beliefs and the shibboleths of Democratic policy, especially on abortion and the death penalty. Which is something Biden knows a little about, having navigated the changing political demands of a purple state—and the changing demands of the party over the course of time.

Kaine, like Biden, has had to navigate a fine line between his personal Catholic beliefs and the shibboleths of Democratic policy.

Biden—like many Catholic Democrats—was pro-life early in his political career. (Like Kaine, he went to Catholic school, and he even briefly considered seminary and priesthood.) But he switched his position after the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision. He has called abortion issues his “biggest dilemma” in matching his religious and political responsibilities. When Biden was picked as VP, he held a mere 36 percent NARAL rating.

Now, going into the Democratic convention this week, Kaine’s biggest challenges revolve around his ability to convince the Bernie Sanders wing of the Democratic Party that he’s progressive enough to champion their ideas in the White House. At times, as on the issue of abortion, Kaine explicitly travels the familiar political road of drawing a line between what he believes and what the government should impose on others. That’s a blueprint straight out of Bidenville: As Joe wrote in his 2007 presidential campaign book, Promises To Keep: “I am personally opposed to abortion, but I don’t think I have a right to impose my view on the rest of society.”

The jury’s still out on whether that strategy will work for Kaine. Trump surrogates have been on the air armed with talking points that call out Kaine’s 100-percent rating with Planned Parenthood. Progressives, however, aren’t ready to seal the deal just yet. “I’m conservative on issues of personal responsibility,” Kaine said in radio ads during his run for governor of Virginia in 2005, dug up last week by BuzzFeed. “As a former Christian missionary, faith is central to my life. I oppose gay marriage, support restrictions on abortion, no public funding and parental consent, and I worked to pass a state law to ban partial birth abortions.”

In fact, Kaine has explicitly skirted his own Catholic-driven moral compass in ways that have frustrated partisans on both sides of the aisle. Sometimes his positions appear to be the result of his own internal conflicts with church doctrine. At other times, Kaine’s stances can seem politically calculating: He has, after all, run for statewide office in the very purple state of Virginia. When running for governor, Kaine seemed to pander to gun rights voters. BuzzFeed found evidence of that 2005-era Kaine promising “not to propose any new gun laws” and favoring full interstate concealed-carry reciprocity. He later voted against reciprocity as a senator, and these days touts himself as a stalwart gun control advocate willing to take on the NRA in his pro-gun state. He opposes the death penalty on moral grounds, but considered it his duty to allow 11 executions as governor. A decade ago, he opposed not only same-sex marriage but also adoption for same-sex couples—but now supports both.

The key, in Biden’s case as well as in Kaine’s, may very well come down to whether voters find them authentic—and luckily, that’s another place where Kaine and Biden match. When talking about issues of justice, economics or health care, “they both see the person behind the policy,” because of their Jesuit backgrounds, says Scott Ferson, president of Liberty Square Group, and one-time press secretary to another Catholic senator, the late Ted Kennedy.

They Both Claimed To Be Boring (But They’re Not)

“Joe Biden, when he was picked, wasn’t an exciting pick and wasn’t seen as an exciting guy,” says Ferson. “It was seen as safe and solid.” The exciting choices for Barack Obama’s running mate included Kansas Governor Kathleen Sebelius and Hispanic New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson. Internally, Obama was all about boring, safe and solid. When he got down to his final three options, campaign manager David Plouffe wrote in The Audacity To Win, two of them were Biden and Kaine. (Evan Bayh, the moderate Indiana senator, was also in the mix.)

Biden, of course, ended up being not quite so boring as Obama might have hoped. Under the glare of running-mate scrutiny, Biden developed a reputation for gaffes and off-the-cuff irreverence. Over time, instead of wrecking the ticket, it was spun as folksy irreverence: Thanks in part to the burgeoning culture of Internet memes, he became known for back rubs, lap-sitting, ice cream eating, and inimitable facial expressions.

In 2008, Biden was described as the boring, safe and solid choice. In 2016, so is Kaine.

Eight years later, Kaine is being described as the boring, safe and solid choice. But Kaine will, like Biden, get the advantage of beating low expectations on the excitement scale. Many who have known Kaine say that his reputation as dull is wildly overstated. “He’s really genial and extroverted,” Feld says. “He genuinely likes people and likes to have fun.” There’s already YouTube video of Kaine playing a Beatles song on harmonica, and he counts the Replacements’ Let It Be as one of his favorite albums. On the campaign trail, Kaine can bring a Bidenesque empathy to illuminate the smart-but-dull policy prescriptions of his boss—as he showed Saturday when discussing the Virginia Tech shooting tragedy he responded to as governor.

That winning personality started to come through quickly, in a Miami rollout that showcased Kaine at his most effortlessly conversational and relatable. With expectations set so low that any sign of a pulse would have surprised, Kaine riffed entertainingly about his life’s fortuitous path. He described his wife in law school meeting “kind of a nerdy guy who had been out teaching kids in Honduras.” He spoke of “battling banks, landlords, insurance companies and even local government” on behalf of those facing housing discrimination. He switched in and out of Spanish, to the delight of the diverse Miami audience. He drew laughs with his gibes at Trump, and his praise of Clinton had her beaming, clapping and laughing at more apparent ease than almost any previous time on the trail.

They Both Have Attracted Boo-birds from Party Progressives

It’s easy to forget that back in 2008, the selection of Joe Biden was not universally cheered within the Democratic Party.

Supporters of Hillary Clinton, still wounded by her narrow loss in the nomination contest, strongly advocated that Obama offer her the other spot on the ticket—far more persistently, by comparison, than Bernie Sanders’ fans pushed for him to be Clinton’s running mate this year.

In 2016, Sanders die-hards have instead demanded a Bernie surrogate—if not Bernie himself, then a populist progressive in his image. Eight years ago, Clintonites hoped Obama would at least choose a woman to crack the second-highest glass ceiling. In fact, John McCain’s ill-fated selection of Sarah Palin initially seemed calculated to capitalize on Obama’s failure to include Clinton on the ticket—a tactic designed as much to steal more disgruntled Clinton voters as to shore up McCain’s conservative appeal. In that respect, the 2008 matchup mirrors the current fear that Sanders voters will defect to Trump.

The progressive wing then was at least as skeptical of Biden as it now is of Kaine. In addition to his abysmal rating on abortion, Biden had a less-than-liberal record on gay rights and criminal justice reform. More importantly, Biden had been a staunch supporter of the Iraq War. He’d supported the authorization vote, and—unlike Clinton—had also supported the actual invasion.

Kaine is currently under fire from the left on trade and banking. But there were plenty of other disappointments for Virginia progressives during Kaine’s term as governor. He supported construction of a new coal-fired power plant by the state’s dominant power company, Dominion, which also was behind a utility deregulation bill Kaine signed into law. He signed a repeal of Virginia’s estate tax—previously vetoed by moderate Democrat Mark Warner—that took money from state services and returned it to fewer than 1,000 of the state’s wealthiest citizens.

Kaine is a liberal, but he is not an ideologue.”

Kaine also refused to do what his successor, Terry McAuliffe, tried to do this year: Restore voting rights to felons after they complete their full sentences. Kaine hedged by saying that he didn’t believe he had the authority to provide such a blanket order—an opinion Virginia’s top court cited in striking down McAuliffe’s move this month. (McAuliffe, undeterred, has vowed to individually grant voting restoration to all 200,000 felons affected, which only further exposed Kaine’s reluctance on what has become a major issue among progressives.)

And that’s just the beginning. Lowell Feld, founder of the Blue Virginia blog, has compiled a list of Kaine’s “Top 20 Failures” as governor—but he remains a strong supporter. “Kaine is a liberal, but he is not an ideologue,” Feld says. “He likes to get things done.”

Obama, of course, didn’t need to shore up the base. Clinton does. Despite that, she’s chosen a running mate who, like Biden, has the superpower of knowing how to win votes in a deeply divided state. Though Virginia is edging toward a reliable win for Democrats in statewide elections, it remains in Republican control at the state legislature level and in eight of 11 congressional districts. Kaine’s moderation has worked not only in the service of getting elected in a tough state, but also to work with the state’s Republican leaders. That’s a cross-aisle skill he carried into the Republican-controlled U.S. Senate when he arrived in 2013—and one that Clinton clearly hopes he’d bring to the White House.

They Were Both Scooped from the Senate

It’s no coincidence that the past six Democratic VP nominees have been U.S. senators: Lloyd Bentsen, Al Gore, Joe Lieberman, John Edwards, Biden and now Kaine. The president can control the White House; he—or she—needs help with the lawmakers on the other side of the mall. “President Obama picked Biden in part because of his strong and deep relationships in the Senate—even though [Obama himself] was in the Senate,” says Jim Manley, director at QGA Public Affairs, who worked in the Senate for 20 years, for George Mitchell, Ted Kennedy and Harry Reid.

Biden’s personality, relationships, trustworthiness and lack of ideological rigidity made him a perfect good cop to Obama’s bad cop, so to speak. That kept a lot of deals alive long past the point when the folks in the Capitol—on both sides of the aisle—grew frustrated with the president’s attitude.

Clinton also served as a senator, of course. But, Manley points out, there has been a huge turnover in Congress since she was last there in 2008. “Kaine’s relationships are fresher than hers are,” Manley says.

Indeed, the announcement of Kaine’s selection as Clinton’s running mate met with more praise than criticism from his Republican colleagues—which was reminiscent of GOP response to Joe Biden’s selection in 2008. Back then, Republican senators including Chuck Hagel, Dick Lugar and Arlen Specter spoke up on Biden’s behalf; now, Pat Toomey, John McCain, Bob Corker and Jeff Flake have done so for Kaine. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina even praised Kaine as “sort of Biden-lite” to Politico.

Senator Lindsey Graham praised Kaine as “sort of Biden-lite.”

Those relationships, and pragmatic approach, are clearly not lost on the person who chose him. Clinton, introducing Kaine on Saturday, twice referred to him as “a progressive who likes to get things done.” It’s much how she sees herself as well—and how she sees Obama, for that matter, which might very well explain why they picked similar working partners.

After all, the vice president’s own agenda is largely irrelevant. The job is to help implement the president’s priorities. Presidents themselves—even those who once had good relationships on the Hill, as Obama and Clinton did as senators—become too politically toxic along partisan lines by the end of the election to make those connections in person. Vice presidents aren’t immune to that effect (see: Cheney, Dick). Biden showed that a vice president can weather it. Kaine is a good bet to follow that example.

Ultimately, that’s why Kaine will likely prove to be a smart choice for Clinton. For all the talk of swing-state Virginia, and Kaine’s fluent español, he probably won’t matter much in the November election. Nor will his apostasies to liberals—or moderates—make much of a difference down the line. What will matter is how effective he is at pushing her agenda once in office. And all signs are that, in that respect, Kaine will be positively Bidenesque.

That’s only if the ticket wins, of course—which is where one key difference with Biden matters.

As a campaigner, Biden has a blue-collar, coal-country appeal that could matter a lot in a year when aggressively plainspoken populism seems to be driving American politics. The side of Joe Biden constantly parodied in The Onion—the Uncle Joe cracking open tallboys, washing his Trans Am in the White House driveway—is exactly the candidate the Democrats are missing this year.

Kaine is affable enough, but doesn’t have Biden’s touch of natural gift of gab—the instinctive desire to both elicit and tell stories with everybody as if they are old friends. And Kaine doesn’t have the personal history of loss that has beset Biden, and helped him to connect to people who find themselves on the wrong end of circumstance. Biden suffered the death of his first wife and their daughter in a 1972 automobile accident, and of his son Beau from brain cancer this year. His struggles with those losses have very clearly defined and shaped him—and, like the president he served, allowed him to merge his personal story with a national narrative that’s especially poignant in times of trauma and loss. It’s made him relatable in a way that escapes Kaine’s seemingly golden-touch life.

Biden’s job, in 2008 and since, has been serving as a bridge between the public and an often aloof, unrelatable Obama. Hillary Clinton has a warmer side than Obama does, but still needs some of that kind of help on the ticket—and tonight we’ll find out whether Kaine is Biden enough to do the same for her.