Bill Scher is the senior writer at the Campaign for America’s Future, and co-host of the Bloggingheads.tv show “The DMZ” along with the Daily Caller’s Matt Lewis.

Everyone assumes Senator Tim Kaine is Hillary Clinton’s “safe” pick for vice president. He’s geographically safe: hailing from the swing state of Virginia, where a Democratic governor can name his replacement. He’s demographically safe: a white male Catholic who speaks fluent Spanish. His résumé is safe, checking the senator, governor and mayor boxes. Even his personality is safe. “I am boring,” Kaine assured America on NBC’s Meet the Press last Sunday.

But ask anyone from the Bernie Sanders wing of the party about TKaine, and suddenly he doesn’t feel very safe at all.


“An establishment Wall Street Democrat like Tim Kaine … will do nothing but confirm to progressives she's learned nothing from this primary,” Jordan Chariton told Politico Magazine, who reports for the Bernie-friendly online talk show The Young Turks.

As many as 22 million potential voters in November are thought to be Sanders-leaning Democrats, and they’re looking for evidence that Clinton is paying some heed to the surprisingly strong insurgency of the socialist from Vermont. Bernie’s success was a clear anti-establishment uprising, strong enough that his supporters expect their agenda will now help shape the future of the party. But choosing Kaine may send them the opposite message: This is her party now, and you aren’t the ones calling the shots.

“Tim Kaine would be a perfect addition to the ticket,” said People for Bernie co-founder Charles Lenchner when asked by Politico Magazine how he would interpret such a pick “in that he would add no progressive backbone that might inconvenience Team Hillary when it's time to govern.”

If you’ve only been loosely following Kaine’s career, this reaction from the left might seem a surprise. In the Senate, Kaine tallied a respectable 90 percent score in the liberal Americans for Democratic Action rating of 2014 Senate votes. He once was thought to be too liberal to win a statewide race in Virginia. So why is he being treated like the second coming of Joe Lieberman, long despised in progressive circles as a conservative “Democrat In Name Only.”

Partly it’s the way he navigates tricky subjects. On abortion, he carries a perfect score from Planned Parenthood regarding his Senate votes—but Kaine is also a devout Catholic who says, as he did on Meet the Press last Sunday, “I don't like it personally. I'm opposed to abortion.” On the budget, Kaine rejected the Simpson-Bowles deficit commission recommendation to reduce Social Security benefits as a Senate candidate in 2012, but he embraced the underlying anti-Keynesian principle of the commission proposal: “two or three dollars of cuts for every dollar of revenue.”

Kaine also appears partial to the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal, loathed by Sanders and his backers. He voted for the “fast track” bill protecting trade agreements from Senate filibusters, a necessary step for TPP ratification (though he said at the time that his vote was “not a blind endorsement of any pending trade negotiation.") And he welcomed the release of the TPP text by pushing back on a main criticism from the left about the process: “Contrary to claims that this is a ‘secret deal,’ the text is being made available—significantly earlier than required ... ” (Last week’s rejection of an anti-TPP plank in the initial Democratic platform by the drafting committee is roiling the left and may make the trade issue a major flash point at the convention.)

Kaine’s maneuvering is typical of a mainstream Democrat. For Sanders supporters, that’s exactly the problem.

Kaine’s maneuvering is typical of a politician in the mainstream of the Democratic Party. Which is exactly the problem: Sanders supporters don’t want a politician in the mainstream of the Democratic Party.

“Picking Kaine, a centrist, DLC [the now-defunct Democratic Leadership Council] Democrat, who happens to have some scary positions on abortion and the deficit, would just confirm that Clinton is the triangulating, centrist, DLC Democrat who many Sanders supporters have claimed her to be,” scoffed Bernie-backer Katie Halper, host of her eponymous radio show on New York’s WBAI, to Politico Magazine, “It would send a message that she's not even pretending to pander to us, which is both refreshingly honest and alarming.”

The Republican National Committee is fully aware that Kaine could potentially widen the rift between populists and the Democratic establishment, dropping an unusual oppo dump this week which captured every right-leaning position Kaine has ever taken—includingp support for offshore oil drilling off the Virginia coast—and declaring, “Tapping The Virginia Senator Would Be A Slap in The Face To Bernie Backers.” (This may have been the first time in history the RNC publicly expressed concern for the feelings of democratic socialists.)

***

It’s clear that a Kaine pick would be beyond disappointing for Bernie loyalists, especially after a season of electrifying rallies and primary wins that demonstrated the genuine populist energy in the party’s young base. But would Kaine really damage Clinton’s bottom line in the main thing she cares about, the popular vote total in November?

Even in Sanders circles, opinions diverge. Shaun King, the New York Daily News' senior Justice writer and Black Lives Matter activist, a Bernie booster, warned that Kaine could be a huge bust: “Her choice of VP, if not someone truly progressive, will seal the deal for many of us to vote elsewhere.” But Halper argues Clinton need not worry: “Neither I, nor any single Sanders supporter I know, is on the fence about who they want to win the general. And nobody is saying, ‘If Clinton names Elizabeth Warren, she has my vote. If she names Kaine, I'm voting for Trump’ … The role of vice president is largely symbolic.”

But turnout is important, especially in the Rust Belt states where economic populism packs a punch and state polls look tighter than in national trial heats. And many circle back to the “inspiration” factor, or lack thereof. “If the goal is to excite Sanders supporters, it's fair to say a Kaine pick would miss the mark,” warned George Goehl, co-director of People’s Action. “He is not someone who will inspire progressives or rouse interest among the young,” sighed Robert Borosage of Campaign for America’s Future (full disclosure: where I work).

And beyond Bernie’s economic populists, Kaine could also dampen enthusiasm within Hillary’s base of reproductive freedom advocates. When The Hill newspaper tried to get Planned Parenthood, NARAL Pro-Choice America and EMILY's List— abortion rights groups that endorsed Clinton—to comment on Kaine’s VP prospects, all clammed up. But Ally Boguhn, political and campaigns editor at the reproductive health news site Rewire, conveyed to Politico Magazine the hesitation found in abortion rights circles: “other Clinton VP options are more roundly pro-choice and seem to align better with a campaign platform hoping to appeal to reproductive rights advocates and supporters.”

Does Kaine have anything to offer the left that could mitigate any backlash? Absolutely. Progressive columnist Michael Tracey, who has been supportive of Sanders, tells Politico Magazine he sees “upside” in that Kaine could “act as a check on Hillary’s vehemently hawkish tendencies … having called on Obama to do quaint things like obtain congressional authorization for the Libya intervention in 2011 and the war against ISIS in 2014. [That] could come in handy should he assume the vice presidency and Hillary sets her sights on toppling some uncooperative foreign government.”

Does Kaine have anything to offer the left that could mitigate any backlash? Absolutely.

And King, while stating his preference for someone “genuinely progressive [and] from an underrepresented group in our government,” stressed his “respect” for Kaine’s record of public service: “I am an ordained pastor and always loved that Tim Kaine spent a year in Jesuit service where he learned not only to speak Spanish fluently, but to appreciate the world we live in. [And] Senator Kaine spent many of his years as an attorney fighting against discrimination and other causes that matter deeply to me. I believe he's a good man.”

But if Kaine just can’t be sold to the pro-Bernie/anti-Clinton camp, is that faction big enough to matter? Potentially. Thirteen million people voted for Sanders in the Democratic primaries and caucuses, but the pool of general election voters goes beyond who participated in the nomination process. The most recent NBC/Wall Street Journal poll found 43 percent of voters classifying themselves as Democrat or leaning Democrat, and 40 percent of that group supported Sanders (in line with the primary popular vote totals). Assuming November's turnout will be 130 million, similar to the past two presidential elections, that puts the Bernie army at 22.4 million strong.

But how much of that 22.4 million is allergic to Hillary? The latest polls from the weekend paint a murky picture. The ABC/Washington Post poll gives Clinton a landslide 12-point lead in a two-way race, with only 8 percent of Sanders’ supporters—1.8 million—voting for Donald Trump. In a four-way race, the Libertarian Party’s Gary Johnson grabs 7 percent and the Green Party’s Jill Stein picks up only 3. Clinton’s vote share drops 4 points—shedding another 5.2 million people. Assuming those are all Sanders backers—a slightly generous assumption—we get a total of 7 million people Hillary is at risk of losing off her left flank. Sounds big, yet, in this scenario, Clinton still maintains a robust 10-point margin.

But the NBC/Wall Street Journal poll tells a completely different story; a 5-point lead for Clinton nearly vanishes when Johnson (10 percent) and Stein (6 percent) are in the mix (Trump’s four-way number is similar in the two polls, but the higher third-party numbers in the NBC/WSJ poll bite Clinton harder). In the two-way matchup, Trump gets 10 percent of Sanders backers, about 2.2 million people. But in the broader field, Clinton’s percentage tumbles 7 points, meaning another 9.1 million jump ship for a total of 11.3 million. Since NBC reported that Clinton holds on to 63 percent of the 22.4 million Sanders supporters, we can more precisely estimate that 8.3 million of Hillary’s 11.3 million lost votes comes from those still feeling the Bern. Clinton is then left with a mere 1-point lead. That’s a risky position.

Which picture is correct? Clinton can’t be sure, especially with the degree of harmony at next month’s convention still an unknown. Adding to the uncertainty is the smattering of state polls that have been released this month. Pre-convention state polling is erratic and sketchy, but there are signs that the electoral map is being scrambled. Public Policy Polling found Trump only 2 to 4 points behind in bluish states Ohio, Pennsylvania, Iowa and New Hampshire, but Clinton only 4 points behind in Republican stronghold Arizona. (An Arizona pollster has Clinton up 4 points in the state.) A CBS round of state polls found Clinton up only 3 in Florida, clinging to a 1-point lead in Colorado, but holding a 2-point lead in previously red North Carolina. Last week, Quinnipiac found Ohio tied and Clinton with a single point edge in Pennsylvania.

In nearly all of these cases, Clinton’s number is stuck in the low 40s. But both the national ABC/Washington Post and NBC/Wall Street Journal polls show higher percentages of Sanders supporters getting on the Clinton bandwagon than the previous month. If you assume that trend naturally continues, Clinton’s number will be buoyed soon enough, no matter what happens with the VP. If you don’t, then the VP pick could potentially affect the outcome.

***

Of course, that’s only true if you believe VP picks ever affect the outcome. There is plenty of evidence that they don’t: rank-and-file Democrats in 2004 beat the drum for Democratic nominee John Kerry to select the charismatic North Carolina Senator John Edwards, but his Southern drawl could not lock down one Southern state. In 2008, Republican nominee John McCain thought he could entice disappointed Clinton supporters to ditch Barack Obama by choosing Governor Sarah Palin—that fateful decision became a tragi-comic HBO movie.

But while Palin proved politically toxic to swing voters and Democrats, she did arguably help soothe conservative Republicans who were hesitant about the relatively moderate McCain. Four years later, Republican vice presidential nominee Paul Ryan—while failing to carry his home state of Wisconsin—at least helped to unify conservatives around the ideologically suspect Mitt Romney. The question for Clinton this year is: Does she really need the ideological help?

The Washington Post’s Chris Cillizza ranks Kaine at the top of the VP list because “the defining trait of Clinton’s political career is caution” and Kaine offers the greatest “sense of safety.” It’s true that the other rumored possibilities carry various risks, be they ideological, demographic or geographic. But without clear polling data and without firm support among the unsettled left, Kaine is not a sure bet either. The cautious Clinton will have to come to grips with this fact: She has no singularly safe VP choice.