This link explains how Kaine cosigning letters, if examined, made sense.
The extent to which he'd oppose or be lukewarm on reinstituting Glass-Steagall would define him as a banking capture, or not. Top of the ticket, big time capture, so the second spot pick cannot really be too much a contrast, given how big banking is such a menace when unchecked.
Where is the man on too-failed-to-be-big; the break-'em-up answer to too big to fail? On income disparity and the ever growing wealth, income and power gap between the 1% and the 99%? Is there anything to distinguish him from being strongly pro-banking? Again, the likely answer is look to the top of the ticket to understand.
The warhawk dimension: From Virginia, which is infested with defense contractor leaches from cyber boutiques to major weapon system players, it should be expected, but noted as a flaw to those believing the defense budget should be trimmed to allow more domestic spending (Econ 101, the guns and butter story). Project for a New American Century, Patriot Act, FISA, NSA spying, AIPAC, and Drone Wars are areas where his policy beliefs likely match Clinton, research to be needed to confirm.
Clearly far from being a progressive of the Sanders/Warren/Jill Stein ilk.
Is he neocon? That bad? Answering the question would also require research to answer.
I have not seen anything about being strongly helpful to unions, nor anything about being against them. Not a right to work zealot, (they infest the Republican party, and tread very, very lightly among the Dems, publicly at least).
NOT being a progressive is enough to put him and the Clintons into the same policy bag, at least in the view of this author.
The impression is he does not yearn for money, thus differing him from the Clintons.
UPDATE: Required reading, one from before the Kaine selection (but in anticipation), the other after. The first linked item - has anyone EVER though of EITHER of the Clintons as "progressive?" I did, going into the first Bill "fool me once" term. Boy were my eyes opened. NAFTA and signing Gingrich bills with approval and enthusiasm. From the two linked items Kaine fits well into the Clintons' Republican-lite sad history.
____________FURTHER UPDATE___________
Dan Burns at MPP writes, "VP-in-waiting Kaine is strongly pro-public schools." Crabgrass readers are urged to follow the link.
The Kaine position described seems very positive, softening the image of a bad VP choice by a compromised candidate.
Public education exists because it is viewed as a social good, something that the private sector did not provide, and something, (like the land-grant universities), which was believed by past lawmakers to have merit. We benefit, as a nation, by avoiding a nation of illiterate adults. It is so, regardless of how some critics might accuse public education of being "propaganda" that parents and their children and clergy should fear and loath.
The voucher proposals for (primarily Catholic) school alternatives always impressed me as akin to saying if you do not like public committment to investing in transit, you can and should get back a pro rata share of the money earmarked for transit, to invest in a bicycle or automobile. It is simply not how a proper public good should be contorted to fit the whims of a dissident few. If inefficiencies are perceived, the solution is to collectively reorient parts of the public system that are non-optimal, not to gut the thing by swiss-cheesing holes throughout it.
