The Clinton-Kaine campaign appears so confident that they will win Virginia in November, the campaign opted to pause ad buys in the Commonwealth beginning next week and Sen. Tim Kaine even apologized on the stump Thursday for his home state’s role for slavery.
Republicans won Virginia 10 consecutive presidential elections in a row since 1968 until Barack Obama won the state in 2008 and again in 2012. The Real Clear Politics average has Clinton ahead of Donald Trump by 5.3 percent.
According to Politico, the pro-Clinton super PAC Priorities USA is limiting its Virginia campaign ads later this month, too.
In the meantime, Kaine drew applause from the National Urban League conference in Baltimore for praising the Black Lives Matter movement as well as making a public apology for his state’s participation in slavery.
“If English lives and history matter, if Spanish lives and history matter, then African-American lives and history ought to matter to us, too,” he said to applause Thursday. “African-American history matters because black lives matter.”
“As governor of Virginia, I did something that no other governor done: I officially apologized on behalf of the commonwealth of Virginia for slavery,” he added. “I’ve done the same thing as mayor of Richmond. I worked… to plan, fundraise and then construct and unveil a civil rights memorial on our capital grounds.”
Conservative activist and documentary filmmaker Dinesh D’Souza, however, observed that Kaine did not apologize for one more thing:
I notice Tim Kaine blames his state of Virginia but not his Democratic Party for slavery https://t.co/dxNlkLcRwN
— Dinesh D’Souza (@DineshDSouza) August 5, 2016