Tim Kaine?

The "eyebrow man" on victory night last fall...


Yes, Tim Kaine does have that sci-fi look about him. I was a bit startled when I saw him delivering the Democrat response last night. Looking at him, at first I thought this might be some sort of new-wave Star Trek character (a slight resemblance to a younger Leonard Nimoy, perhaps?). Then, I thought someone must be pulling my leg...Kaine has been in office for what, three weeks? And he was picked to give the response? That's sort of like Mike Holmgren benching Matt Hasselbeck for the Super Bowl, and starting Senneca Wallace at QB instead.

Are the honchos at the DMC really Mark Warner fans and hoping by osmosis that spotlighting Kaine will somehow prop up Warner's supposed White House candidacy in '08? Was this Howard "Yeee-Haaa!" Dean's idea? Hillary's idea? Bill's idea?

Dems have usually had high-profile guys, like Dick Gephardt, give their responses to the SOTU in the recent past. If they wanted to cause a stir and take some spotlight away from W, they should have had a firebrand like Russ Feingold give the response. I suppose Kaine was the best alternative, considering The Philanderer & Ted Kennedy were probably out skirt-chasing after the SOTU.

My belief? Dems are taking a calulated risk by not stirring the pot too much before the mid-term elections, they are simply sitting back and hoping Bush's low approval numbers linger, along with Iraq, into the fall, when they might be able to backdoor their way into control of the House or Senate. In one sense, Kaine is their recent poster child, because his election was one of the only major ones to occur last fall, when W's numbers were low. That was a very plausible reason that helped sweep Kaine into office instead of Jerry Kilgore, and also took down some old-line GOPers in the Virginia House of Delegates. Any doubts, ask my cousin Bob Marshall, who expressed those fears before the Virginia elections last fall. He survived but saw some old colleagues go down to defeat. The Dems are hoping Bush's approval ratings are still sitting in the 40% range in the fall. Why stir the pot with a guy like Feingold, especially when many of the power people in the party, such as Hillary, are not rocking the Iraq/Iran boat. I wouldn't be surprised if Kaine's appearance was a cold and calculated move hatched by The Philanderer himself.

Kaine's appearance potentially could prove poltiically shrewd, but it underlines a generally gutless approach by the Dems, as they are not offering much of an alternative. When the GOP took advantage of Bill Clinton's woeful numbers in '94, at least it was offering the "Contract with America" as an alternative vision. The clueless Dems lost their compass long ago, however. Nonetheless, using the Kaine example and other results, had mid-term elections been held last November, the Dems might have seized control of one or more sides of Congress. I'm sure the GOP has taken heed.

And why Dems continue to deify The Philanderer is beyond me. They lost control of Congress in '94, and have yet to regain it, because of Clinton, yet he still gets afforded hero-worship from the rank and file Dems!

By the way, take a good look at Hillary next time she's on camera. The woman is aging badly. She is wearing more makeup these days than Susan Lucci, probably to cover a face that now has more lines than Disneyland Park over Christmas vacation...