This Week, Tim Kaine Became the DNC's Favorite Daddy

While the North Carolina Republican party was berating vice presidential nominee Tim Kaine Tuesday night for wearing a Honduran flag pin (he wasn't), the Virginia senator was winning over hearts on Twitter.

Before being tapped to run alongside Hillary Clinton, Kaine was unknown to many outside of his state. But as he delivered his acceptance speech at the Democratic National Convention, people started to liken his demeanor to the endearing father figure seen in a lot of old TV sit-coms. According to data pulled from Sysomos, Kaine's was the most frequently tweeted name used in conjunction with "daddy" and either "DNC" or "DemsInPhilly" between Monday and Thursday.

Uri Fintzy is one of the people who referred to Kaine as "daddy" during the convention on Twitter, writing, "TIM KAINE IS MY NEW FAVORITE EVER LOVE YOU DADDY." He says he's a fierce supporter of Clinton, but he wasn't "fully on board the Kaine Train" until after he did his research and saw that the senator had "overcome old religious standpoints."

When asked why he likens Kaine to a father figure, Fintzy said that's how he views the vice president. "There's something about the VP that Joe Biden cemented, a person you can trust but also kind of like a dad."

With his graying receding hairline and a twinkle in his eye, Kaine seems like the kind of guy known for his dad jokes. He told the crowd inside Philadelphia's Wells Fargo Center on Tuesday, "We all should feel the Bern, and we all should not want to get burned by the other guy."

Twitter had plenty of its own dad jokes as well. One guy tweeted, "Tim Kaine is the soccer dad excluded by the other soccer dads." Another wrote, "Tim Kaine is your friend's dad who catches you smoking weed at a sleepover and doesn't rat you out but talks to you about brain development."

But is there a difference between "dad" and "daddy"? Fintzy says he's using "daddy" in more of a Marilyn Monroe, Gentlemen Prefer Blondes context. "It's a little submissive, but I'm honestly happy there's a soft-spoken, generally good guy I can trust in Washington."

Last night, a black and white photo of a young Kaine made the rounds on Twitter, fueling the "daddy" flames in a different way. As one woman put it, "Not to be all kinky, but young Tim Kaine is so daddy."

Pamela Ross went a little further, tweeting "fuck me daddy" directly to Kaine. When asked why, she tells Broadly, "It's the most literal manifestation of all the 'young Tim Kaine could get it' jokes possible." It's also, she explains, a reference to the Twitter phenomenon in which people (usually teens) tweet "fuck me daddy" at authority figures like the Pope.

"I'm a comic but topical humor isn't really my thing, so this was my extremely dumb contribution to the discourse surrounding the DNC," she says.

Shortly after claiming the prestigious position of the DNC's favorite father figure, however, the VP candidate told CNN that he still supports the Hyde Amendment, which bans Medicaid coverage of abortion, despite having previously stated that he supported repealing the measure—proving that even your fantasy dad can let you down.