Sen. John Fetterman (D-PA), once a darling of the Democrat Party and now a party pariah, is reportedly skipping the 2024 Democratic National Convention.
The sensational senator, whose sudden apostatizing while in office left his fellow Democrats livid, said the reason isn't Israel-related.
According to what Fetterman told The Free Press's senior editor Peter Savodnik, "[I]t has nothing—literally nothing—to do with him scotch-taping photos of the Israeli hostages to his Senate office walls. Or attacking fellow Democrats Rashida Tlaib and Ilhan Omar for falsely blaming a hospital bombing in Gaza on Israel. ('It's truly disturbing that Members of Congress rushed to blame Israel for the hospital tragedy in Gaza. Who would take the word of a group that just massacred innocent Israeli civilians over our key ally?') Or comparing the pro-Hamas encampment at Columbia to a neo-Nazi rally ('Add some tiki torches and it’s Charlottesville for these Jewish students,' he tweeted)."
Nor is it about "Fetterman Alumni for Peace," a posse of Fetterman's former campaign staffers publicly scolding their ex-employer: "It is not too late to change your stance and stand on the righteous side of history."
"I've got three young kids, and they're out of school," the Pennsylvania senator simply stated in an hour-long Zoom call. "That's four days I can spend with my children," Fetterman said of his absence at the Chicago convention center, shrugging off the suggestion that he's not welcome there.
The choice was made "well before that debate," Fetterman maintained. You know, the disastrous Biden-Trump debate that ultimately rang the death knell of President Joe Biden's doomed 2024 campaign.
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Savodnik asked Fetterman if he ever feels lonely amongst his own party members. "Well, I mean, it's, it's," he replied, laughing uneasily, "I keep saying, just like the convention, it's not about me." Savodnik delineated the schism in great detail (via The Free Press):
Still, it's hard to imagine Fetterman being welcome in Chicago—as strong a sign as any of the paradigm shift that has taken place inside his party.
[...]Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez suggested, in May, that Fetterman is a bully. Former MSNBC host Mehdi Hasan tweeted, in January, 'A lot of folks don’t recognize John Fetterman these days.' The Patriot-News, in Harrisburg, published an op-ed addressing the senator and headlined: 'I wish I had never voted for you.'
Maybe they were onto something. In December, the senator tweeted: 'I'm not a progressive, I'm just a regular Democrat.' This marked a shift: Back in 2016, when he ran (unsuccessfully) for the Senate for the first time, he called himself a 'progressive champion.' In 2020, he celebrated unions, calling them, 'Progressive. Simple. Sacred.'
Meanwhile, since October 7, Republicans regarded Fetterman warmly, if warily. 'How is it possible that John Fetterman in the last few months has seemingly become more based than half of the senate GOP???' Donald Trump Jr. tweeted in January. 'No clue what this cat is up to,' a Republican strategist told me.
It’s true that he'd embraced border security, but his real crime—the thing that had alienated him from the progressives—was Israel. They don't let him forget it.
In November, protesters outside the Capitol booed him. In January, anti-Israel protesters descended on Fetterman's home in Braddock. (The senator took to the roof, waving an Israeli flag.) Online activists called him Genocide John. And every Friday for months, protesters have demonstrated outside his Philadelphia office, chanting, 'Let Gaza live,' and 'Cease-fire now.' (The protests are called 'Fridays at Fetterman's.')
As Matt will cover, even Fetterman's current congressional staffers are opposing him.
"I don't agree with him" about Israel and Gaza, said Fetterman's communications director Carrie Adams over the phone after Savodnik's interview with the senator wrapped up.
"I have a sense that his international views are a lot less nuanced than my generation, because when he was growing up, it was might makes right, and for my generation and younger who, of course, are the ones protesting this, they have a much more nuanced view of the region," Adams added.
Sixty-five percent of U.S. college students (two in three) support the pro-Hamas encampments that took over college campuses earlier in the year, with many (over one-third) favoring the use of violence and "hate speech," according to an Intelligent.com survey. A plurality (31 percent) of respondents reported that TikTok was the primary place they'd learned about the Israel-Hamas conflict.
"If sporting a keffiyeh and retweeting whatever the Gaza Ministry of Health just said is how young progressives signal to each other that they're in the in-group, that they've gone full radical chic, then Fetterman is whatever the opposite of that is," Savodnik quipped.
Several other Democrat senators will also be ditching the DNC, though they're in some of the most competitive races of 2024. Not in attendance: Sens. Sherrod Brown of Ohio, Jon Tester of Montana, and Jacky Rosen of Nevada are all not planning on appearing at the four-day event, according to their respective offices. However, some Democrats running in battleground state races, like vulnerable incumbent Sen. Bob Casey of Pennsylvania, are slated to show up for at least a portion of the conference, as Rebecca previously covered.
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