Sen. Tim Kaine: Joe Biden has my vote. He will restore character, compassion and competence to our nation

I stepped outside my home in Richmond last Saturday to get the morning paper and read the front-page headline—“U.S. Sets One Day Record for Infections.” Versions of the same headline were on the front page of papers across our country. In the tenth month of the global coronavirus crisis, we lead the world in deaths, and cases are surging all across America.

It didn’t have to be this way, as the experience of other nations—Canada, South Korea, Germany—demonstrates. President Trump has flunked the basic test of a president. He hasn’t kept us safe.

My vantage point on the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee has given me a front-row view into the administration’s mishandling of this crisis.

At our first briefing about the virus in late January, the tension between the administration’s scientists and political spinmeisters was obvious. President Trump viewed this challenge as a threat to his personal political fortune rather than as a threat to the nation’s health. So he sought to minimize it, even to the point of attacking those of us who took it seriously and embraced basic safety steps. And all the while, he’s been pushing his heartless plan to actually take away Americans’ health care in the midst of the pandemic.

SEN. DICK DURBIN: I’M VOTING FOR JOE BIDEN BECAUSE AMERICA NEEDS HIM AS PRESIDENT

By lying about the crisis and refusing to take necessary safety steps, President Trump made it dramatically worse, and many have died unnecessarily as a result. In addition, his strategy of pretending that the virus would soon disappear has caused immense devastation to the U.S. economy, much more damage than that experienced in nations with leaders who took fighting the virus more seriously. The unemployment rate is now 7.9%, 65% greater than when President Trump took office.

I support Joe Biden because he will restore character, compassion, and competence to a nation tired of the death, depression, and division wrought by Donald Trump. And I’ve seen Joe help rescue our country once before.

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When the nation’s economy collapsed in the fiscal crisis of 2008, I was governor of Virginia. After Barack Obama and Joe Biden were elected that November, they gathered the nation’s governors at Constitution Hall in Philadelphia and promised that they would consult with us to take the big necessary steps to rebuild the American economy. It wasn’t about Democrat versus Republican. We were all in this together.

I watched the new administration work together with the nation’s governors to put together an economic recovery plan that Congress passed in February 2009. President Obama asked Joe Biden to lead the effort of implementing the plan nationwide. And he did it successfully, patiently working with all of us to usher in the longest economic expansion in U.S. history.

Here’s what I learned about Joe during that tough chapter. His heart is in the right place, and he knows good government. But he also knows he doesn’t have all the answers. So he pulled us together, made a plan, implemented it, and stuck with it until it succeeded. He didn’t lie. He didn’t divide. He didn’t attack people. He didn’t grow bored with the effort. He didn’t surrender. He did what it took to help America climb out of the deep hole we were in.

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We need that kind of leadership now. A Biden-Harris administration will implement the plan that Joe has carefully laid out to defeat COVID—not give up and pretend that a rising death toll is acceptable. A Biden-Harris administration will build a ladder for American families and businesses so we can climb out of the economic crisis we are in.

And a Biden-Harris administration will never forget that it’s not about them. It’s about you. It’s about all of us. Let’s reunite for the success that America deserves with Joe Biden as our next president.