The joyful Minnesota governor is a valuable spokesperson for Harris whose background and personality can help the Democratic ticket undermine Trump’s efforts to woo America’s men.
Tim Walz’s first official speech on the Democratic ticket displayed all the reasons that Kamala Harris has been lauded for picking the Minnesota governor as her running mate. Personally, I think one outshines all the rest.
Walz’s military background and his work as a high school teacher and football coach, along with his palpable joy and open expressions of compassion for people in need, offer America a vision of what manhood can look like — he’s a “joyful warrior” offering a vision in contrast with what’s being offered by Donald Trump’s bravado-driven campaign.
And he’s clearly willing to challenge Team Trump on that front. He displayed that even before he received the call to join Harris’ campaign, using public appearances to refer to Trump and his allies as “bullies” who are truly weak at heart and by mocking the GOP ticket for “running for He-Man Women Haters Club or something.”
Why is manhood even an issue?
I’ll probably regret this, but for shits and giggles, I’m going to try and give an earnest answer here.
Let’s first assume that “manhood” is a thing. That there are people in the world who define themselves by gender roles, however those manifest. It might be biology, appearance, dress, behavior, profession or any number of other ways that someone chooses to manifest a gender role.
So if we accept that, there’s a lot of ways of approaching what western society might call “manhood”: machismo, aggression, breadwinning, vinyl collecting, having the best lawn in the suburbs, etc. This is where things get dicey, in my opinion. The right is full of angry men who feel slighted by a society that they feel increasingly has no place for them. In some ways they are right: men are less likely to have education past high school, less likely to have modern workforce skills and less likely to have their formerly tolerated bullshit accepted anymore. This has lead to the rise of what people often refer to as “toxic masculinity”. People who lean into traits like misogyny or racism and follow leaders who make them feel tough, like they are in the driver’s seat again.
I think the appeal of Walz is that he gives at least the appearance of another path. He’s a man, no question. He hunts, he fishes, he works on his pickup truck, he coached football, and he taught social studies. But he’s also championed reproductive rights, LGBT causes, and even took a fairly light hand during the BLM protests in 2020 (which can be easily twisted, unfortunately). He’s the kind of pro-labor and pro-rural progressive that started to get marginalized in the 2000s, was on it’s death bed when the Tea Party ascended and that MAGA seemed to finally bury.
So yes, manhood is an issue because that seems to be a major part of the ethos that is following the alt-right. But Walz is a man that a lot of men can see themselves in: men who work, love their families and who want government to support their lives, not some fantasy they wish existed. Government that does infrastructure, public safety, boring stuff that we used to not have to think about. And because he’s done all those “manly” things he feels like the old fashioned man that a lot on the alt-right claim to want back, while showing them that old fashioned man is not what they think it is.
So there it is. I admire Walz. He’s not perfect, but neither am I. I hope he doesn’t disappoint me.
People tend to emulate people they like and who they’d like to like them too. So there’s the hateful, angry, violent manhood that flock to Trump, valuing force, violence, and any-means-necessary victory. Then there’s cool manhood that has a happy family and a respectable job and treats people with human decency and kindness.
It’s the difference between the highschool football player who bullies everyone and date rapes the prom queen, and the chill football player everybody likes, had a normal girlfriend, and who sticks up for other kids.
Which would you rather be a role model for America?
The generations of men that raised gen x and millennial boys were often all about being a manly man. The media we watched as children and young adults was all about it. This vision of manliness was all about physical strength, lack of emotion other than anger, and pride. Physical strength isn’t a bad quality, and pride can be good, but what we were taught by men in person and media was dogshit. We were the generations that called things that were lame “gay”.
So Walz, despite being a trained soldier and football coach, is not manly because he displays emotion, empathy, and humility.
This is why it’s an issue.
We need more good male role models. People with tender hearts and rough hands.
and rough hands.
What do you mean by this? It sounds borderline, if not outright, like toxic masculinity. There’s nothing about the shape of your hands that has anything to do about how good of a role model you are as a dad.
The idea is not actually about a man’s physical hands. It’s a metaphor for putting in the work. That could be volunteering, going to bat for your community, spending quality time with your kids/grandkids/family, working long hours to make sure your family has what it needs to survive, etc.
Yes, some men do manual labor and have rough hands, but OP isn’t saying that all men should do manual labor, just that they should all put in the “work” to make the world, their community, and their family’s lives better.
It’s a metaphor for putting in the work.
Hopefully this is the case, but it sounds an awful lot like “strong blue collar dad is good, white collar dad bad” to me.
Honestly, I see Walz as a strong and empathetic dad figure, and Harris as a firm but joyful mom figure for a lot of Americans who had shit parental figures growing up.
They make an excellent team.
While Trump is the weird granddad who really went off the deep end, and Vance the creepy uncle who you don’t trust leaving alone in your home with your couch.
I’m pretty tolerant of other people’s beliefs, but I draw the line at people who sodomize couches. /s :)
Speaking of shit parents, I think it’s relevant that they’re the first non-boomer candidates (Biden technically isn’t but he’s close) since '92.
Generations are roughly 20 years or so. 92-24 is 32 years.
Its pretty reasonable that over the course of that time, we would move away from the previous generations, finally into Gen X. I would expect this the last time someone from before GenX would be elected, strictly because they will all age out soon.
I see Harris as that goofy kind hearted aunt. She might not connect with you all the time, but you know she means well. Walz is definitely more like the dad that Americans wish they grew up with.
I don’t treat politicians like family members. I’m not interested in that.
I want boring politics. I want them to not fucking be in the news every time they sneeze. I want kids to get lunches. I want Americans to be able to live a comfortable life. I want immigrants to become Americans and conservative terrorism to get fucked.
I don’t want a cool aunt figure and I’m not interested in putting any of these politicians as a hat slogan or a flag.
Fuck Trump and I’m voting for Harris. But don’t get it twisted…
this is my analysis of the running candidates right now, but Kamala is the urbanite minority runner, walz is the rural white runner. Kamala has lots of experience in urban environments and dealing with large companies and corpos, walz has a lot of experience supporting individuals and families and has many years in rural Midwestern politics.
kamala is more visibly younger, walz is visibly older, but they’re both essentially 60. Kamala picks up the votes of the younger millenials and gen z’s while walz picks up the votes of the gen x and boomer populations who resonate with his values.
Kamala should represent basically every large population center, cali, new york, probably not chicago, but they’ll probably vote for her anyway, etc…
Walz is basically courting the entire midwestern vote by being midwestern, as well as rural, more moderate/center leaning voters.
This is quite literally the avengers team of the democratic party right now. I don’t think you could have made a better team.
Idk I’m a zennial and Walz hits right in the Midwest of it all. I’d be voting for Kamala for sure and I’m excited for a female president, especially one that isn’t Hillary, but to my young urban Midwestern tendencies walz feels like a guy who’d brag about how cheap his couch was before making a quip about it not being cheap enough to fuck Vance. He feels more Ohioan than Vance for certain.
I agree with everything you’ve said, the optics and the “feels” are at an all time high.
That said, a lot of reporting is saying that the choice of VP doesn’t have a significant impact on election day.
IDK how that can really be true though. For the next several months Walz will be shaping the public’s opinion of Kamala. Obviously on election day people will vote for Kamala or Trump, but Walz can convince people to vote for Kamala.
AIPAC sponsored drunk driving genocide enthusiasts are liberals’ idea of positive masculinity?
This explains a lot.
Looking forward to the Republican who badmouths Walz for being a football coach, only to be reminded of Tommy Tuberville.
so far the worst they’ve had to say is that he’s left leaning. Oh no, he likes queer people having rights, what ever will we do.
I think every other significant dig has turned into a meme almost immediately so it’s not working very well.
Over on r conservative they’ve got nothing to say about his actual policies. I’m just surprised the guy mentioning the horse thing got downvoted
yeah makes sense, republicans dont even run on policy anymore, so it’s quite literally a crippled platform, they can only scream and yell about shit that makes them mad.
As for the horse cum thing, i think anybody that says that needs to be perma banned. It’s insane to me that it’s even gathering friction, and i won’t take satire as a answer for unironically stating that someone drinks horse cum this time.
They’re also trying to claim he’s a coward for not serving in the military long enough. 24 years is apparently a short timeframe in the eyes of a republican
he served for 9 years in the military, and then transferred to the national guard, is what im reading.
This also ignores that trump was a vietnam draft dodger…
