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Daughter of Michigan candidate says not to vote for her father in viral tweet

Stephanie Regan has garnered over 150,000 likes for a tweet that urges Americans not to vote for her father. It’s the most concise representation of the generational divide thus far.

Trying to argue with parents about political matters is tough enough as it is, but imagine how much harder it would be if they were trying to bag themselves a seat in the Michigan state house.

This is the reality for Stephanie Regan, daughter of Republican Michigan candidate Robert Regan, who begged voters not to back her father a week ago on Twitter. Her tweet has since gone viral and has nearly reached 200,000 retweets at the time of writing.

https://twitter.com/streeganz/status/1275555697640390656?s=20

After just a little bit of research it’s easy to see why Stephanie felt the need to speak out.

Her father is an avid Trump supporter who doesn’t believe in systematic racism except for ‘abortion clinics’, apparently. It’s very clear that he’s a right-wing conservative elitist, who describes his daughter’s university education as akin to Marxism and communist brainwashing and believes Trump has done ‘more for the black community than any other president of the last twenty years’ in a Facebook response. Yikes.

Stephanie meanwhile is a left-leaning progressive who followed her initial tweet up with a lengthier message promising to use this attention to advocate for minorities. Her mother has also made a statement that discredits Robert’s legitimacy as a political candidate and describes years of ‘emotional and verbal abuse’ that has caused the family heaps of suffering. To sum it up, Robert is really, really awful.

https://twitter.com/streeganz/status/1277412966980337664?s=20

Unfortunately Robert continues to receive support from some voters online, with boomer Twitter users even coming for Stephanie on her original tweets and accusing her of ‘family betrayal’. It’s an uncomfortable indication that dismissive and regressive older white men can continue to receive votes from others their own age despite being abusive, extremely close-minded, and fraudulent. The white privilege here is incredibly real.

It’s also perhaps the most succinct representation of generational divide I’ve seen on social media. The gap between white Trump supporters and the left-leaning social media savvy youth continues to widen, and the onslaught of replies to Stephanie’s tweets that use cringy overly compressed political memes and boomer humour shows that right wing conservatives continue to thrive.

On the flip side, Stephanie’s tweet has been shared over 40,000 times and it’s clear that a huge group online support her defiance of her father. It’s also great to see younger people continuing to directly challenge the men who could wind up in office sooner rather than later, and ensure that minorities and those who need to be listened to continue to get a platform.

The less old blokes denying systematic racism we have in positions of power, the better. We’ve already got one leading the free world and that’s as bad as it should get. The world does not need any more Trumps and in case it needed any more stressing, don’t vote for Robert if you live in Michigan.

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