Did Kaine actually help?

[Fuzzy Bear]

Kaine came off as a pandering version of Howdy Doody.  This would have been OK if Hillary didn't need more help than she turned out needing.

Hillary, IMO, was beyond the help of a VP.  Kaine didn't hurt her.  Hillary hurt herself.

[Fuzzy Bear]

Kaine was the .260-hitting SS with a decent glove who might win the Gold Glove some years.  He filled a role and filled it OK.  If you've got Mickey Mantle as your cleanup hitter, you can win with that. 

Kaine didn't boot ground balls he should have fielded.  He was steady, unspectacular, but he "made all the plays".  The problem is that Hillary needed to have an ordinary Mickey Mantle season to put Trump away, and what she got was Mickey Mantle's last season. 

Trump was NOT a great candidate, but he had strategic advantages no one realized until he won, and won in the way he won.  Trump was Dave Kingman, but he hit lots of HRs and he had a Gold Glove SS (Mike Pence) and a team of hungry rookies making things happen. 

For those who don't follow the baseball analogy:  Pence was a help to Trump in ways that Kaine was not a help to Clinton.  Pence was serious and thoughtful to where folks put off with Trump's persona would look at the calm, sober Pence and conclude that Trump couldn't be THAT bed if THIS guy is with him.  He came off as an endorser with credibility.  Kaine came off as a do-boy and a flunky.  He's more than that, but he came off that way. 

Kaine is a talented pol with excellent diverse experience in both politics and government.  He's a guy that's qualified to be President, and he's the guy the Democrats would be talking about for 2020 if he had been Ed Muskie on the trail, but he wasn't.  He was Dan Quayle.  That's not an insult; Dan Quayle is a sharp politician who was an able VP, and he wasn't a bad campaigner, but he had his moments where others made him (unfairly, IMO) look bad, and he never got off the ground as a Presidential contender.