Democratic vice presidential candidate Tim Walz embodies everything liberal women see in their own fathers – except for their political views. For some, it makes them hopeful but also very sad.
He’s got jokes, enthusiasm and a smiley face that’s not even remotely trying to hide how he’s feeling. He’s Tim Walz- and he’s bringing major Midwestern dad energy to the Democratic ticket.
At least that’s how many white women feel when they see Walz in videos, riding the Slingshot at the state fair with his daughter, signing legislation to give kids in Minnesota free lunches or tweeting about his pet cat.
It’s in stark contrast to what some see in their own fathers - who often have more conservative political views.
“He is silly. My dad used to be very, very silly and goofy,” Pamela Wurst Vetrini, a woman who recently compared Walz to her father, said in a viral TikTok video.
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“A lot of us had moderate to conservative, educated, sensible fathers that we lost to Rush Limbaugh. That we lost to Fox News. That we lost to Donald Trump. And the cult of conservatism that has grown and grown and grown has driven a wedge between millennial woman and her father,” she said.
What’s unnatural is connecting their grieving process to a guy they see on TV and then wrapping this into their political choices.
You’ll notice this isn’t only happening among people voting for Harris. Among Trump voters, you know what they do? They slot Trump into that father figure role! People shouldn’t be making politicians into parental figures. Something is wrong.
I don’t think there is anything wrong about coming to your own conclusions from public figures about the ways in which your personal relationships have been impacted by said public figures. Yes we don’t know these people directly but they impact and shape our lives, sometimes without us even knowing it.
Public figures aren’t actually people we can connect with, though. It’s a para-social relationship.
I think “connection” can be very subjective depending on who you’re talking to, and I think this conversation needs a lot more nuance than perhaps is being given to it. I think by not lending credence to how we form connections and bonds with these political figures through emotion, we are trying to act like that it doesn’t exist (or shouldn’t), which isn’t true. The article here seems more to be pointing out that liberal women have lost their fathers to far-right ideology, not so much that they are now attaching that lost relationship to Walz. It seems more as though Walz helped these women come to terms with this fact, or enlightened them to it.
I mean, can you really call it unnatural overall if people have a desire to connect to and with others - even if it’s not fully logical. Emotions can be far from logical.
In a natural process, someone might connect with an older man in the community as a father figure in their own life. A mentor or a local leader, perhaps.
Emotionally connecting to the TV is disrupting a natural and healthy process by inserting a father figure that they can never really connect with.
