Tim Kaine: Unfit for Vice President

Danville, Kentucky -- Folks, I reserve a special and terrible rage for bandwagon fans. Nothing makes me feel vicious, burning fury deep in the pit of my stomach more than a guy whose rooting loyalties are as whimsical as Crooked Hillary's public and private positions. In sports as it is in geopolitics, geography is destiny. The only thing that can prevent sports fandom from devolving into a Seinfeldian exercise in "rooting for laundry" is to loyally root for only those teams which are geographically proximate to what you consider your 'home.' Picking and choosing what teams to root for degrades the integrity of sports fandom and renders the whole enterprise a meaningless exercise in standings-watching.



My Uncle Bert is a man who understands this. My Uncle Bert lives in Flint, Michigan. He's a life long Detroit Lions fan, a team that has never appeared in the Super Bowl and owns the second-longest championship drought in professional sports. He worked from 8-to-5, five days a week at the GM plant for most of his adult life. He would spend his free-time on Mondays, Tuesdays, Wednesdays, Thursdays, and Fridays chatting with his co-workers around the water cooler about whatever the latest Lions tragedy was: Barry Sanders retiring, Marty Mornhinwheg electing to take the wind rather than the ball in a confounding overtime loss to the Chicago Bears in 2001, the 2-14 2001 season, the 0-16 2008 season, the Charles Rogers bust, Calvin Johnson retiring, etc. These are but a few of the puzzling heartbreaks my Uncle has had to endure during his long tenure as a Lions fan.

With each passing year, fewer and fewer co-workers would chat with my uncle around the water cooler about the Motor City's not-so-loveable losers. With time, many fairweather Lions fans became Green Bay Packers fans, or Minnesota Vikings fans, or Bears fans. Yet, my Uncle has faithfully persevered. His loyalty will be rewarded with a special satisfaction only true fans can enjoy when the valleys of his misery are lifted up and every mountain and hill of NFL glory are made low, when the Lions finally win a Super Bowl.

The same cannot be said of many sports fans. Everybody knows that one co-worker. They claim to be fans of the New England Patriots, Golden State Warriors, New York Yankees, Ohio State football, and University of Kentucky basketball. They're always on the right side of history because they always root for the winner, and the winner always writes history.

Folks, democratic vice presidential nominee Tim Kaine is that one co-worker. He's a graduate of the University of Missouri, yet roots for that school's blood rivals, the Kansas Jayhawks. But only in basketball. Tim Kaine has disavowed KU football, and rooted for Virginia Tech and Missouri football at various points in his tortured public life. This is bandwagon fandom par excellence. Tim Kaine opportunistically roots for the very successful Kansas basketball team while distancing himself from its struggling football squad. Senator Kaine, if you can't handle KU football at their worst, you don't deserve KU basketball at its best. Tim Kaine's refusal to believe in KU football is going to make him look silly come 2019 when David Beaty and the boys win the Big XII conference. Mr. Kaine, there won't be room for you on the bandwagon when that day comes.

Tim Kaine's sports rooting interests reveal a stunning lack of principle that renders him unfit to serve as vice president, a feeble Hillary Clinton heartbeat away from the presidency. Moreover, Kaine's inconsistencies points to a problem endemic to the slippery Clinton campaign. Clinton and Kaine have no deeply-held beliefs, principles, or values. They stand for nothing. How can we trust Hillary to fight for Americans on trade issues and pursue fair trade deals when she called Obama's awful TPP deal the "gold standard"? Kaine's political views have all the steadiness of a weather-vane. Just like Kaine threw Kansas football under the bus, he threw American workers on the bus by vocally supporting TPP prior to flip-flopping once he got picked as Clinton's VP.

Being a Danville man, I'm a Cincinatti Bengals fan and not a Lions fan like my dear Uncle Bert. But my Uncle Bert taught me loyalty. America needs a president and vice president who mean what they say and say what they mean. We can't afford politicians who only support teams once they're winning and only support policies once they're popular. My Uncle Bert knew this. And so does Donald Trump.