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Photo by Jay Paul
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Photo by Jay Paul
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Photo by Jay Paul
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Photo by Jay Paul
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Gov. Terry McAuliffe addresses the crowd. (Photo by Jay Paul)
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Photo by Jay Paul
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Click the link below to view video from the rally.
Click here to view video from the rally
Speaking before a crowd of hometown supporters and political allies just before midnight Monday in a hangar at Richmond International Airport, U.S. Sen. Tim Kaine emphasized the historic nature of today's presidential election. "The time is now," to elect a woman as president, he said. "It's way past time."
Touting his running mate's vision and motivation, he said that Hillary Clinton persevered after her efforts to accomplish health care reform under her husband's administration fell short and she weathered a storm of personal criticism, by helping to create the Children's Health Insurance Program.
"Eight million American children got health insurance because Hillary Clinton wouldn't back down, wouldn't go away, wouldn't give up," Kaine said. "Isn't that what you want in a president?"
Taking a swipe at Republican nominee Donald Trump, he said, "He has a passion. It's just that his passion is Donald Trump." (Around the same time, Trump appeared at a late-night rally in Loudoun County, vowing to repeal "Obamacare," "drain the swamp" of corruption in Washington and build the wall along the southern U.S. border).
Pointing out that many didn't expect Virginia to swing in Barack Obama's favor in 2008, Kaine said, "They didn't believe you could turn from facing backward to facing forward." Before that election, he said, "There were a lot of people in this country, a whole lot of people, who never could see themselves as president of the United States."
Now they can, and the same could be true this year, he said, adding that Virginia has an opportunity to overcome its history of resisting women's right to vote by delaying until 1952 ratification of the 19th Amendment that Congress passed in 1919.
"There's some history we can make tomorrow," Kaine said. "We don't have to be holding it back."
