Sen. John Fetterman (D-PA) is increasingly becoming a pariah within his own party, if you didn’t already know that. He’s likely to lose re-election because Democrats in his state can’t stand him, and there aren’t enough Republicans and Independents to save him. He’s rejected this move, but switching parties isn’t an option. For starters, he admits he wouldn’t agree with the GOP on some major issues. Also, there’s no way Pennsylvania Republicans would let him just take that slot in the next election. There will be a primary, and he’d lose. So, he’s going to do what he can to make DC work, I guess. Who knew he would become the next Joe Manchin of the Senate—a Democrat who’s reasonable.
Fetterman has irritated his party on several issues, like Operation Epic Fury, border security, the ballroom, and others, but now he’s concerned that his base is a hotbed of anti-Americanism. He’s not wrong (via The Hill):
Sen. John Fetterman (D-Pa.) on Wednesday accused the Democratic base of becoming “increasingly anti-American” amid calls against U.S. military intervention in Venezuela, Iran and Cuba.
Reason magazine’s Nick Gillespie, asked Fetterman on the “Reason Interview” podcast about what the senator thinks of his politics now, having backed Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), a democratic socialist, in 2016.
“Well, I mean, you know, in 2016, it was much more about the minimum wage and some other very basic kinds of thing,” Fetterman said. “And now that’s, that’s just turned into much more standing with like Cuba, standing with Venezuela, standing with the Iranian regime and, and turn that into much more becoming more increasingly anti-American for me. So, my views really haven’t changed that much.”
Fetterman said he has not seen a change in his political views, citing his support for marriage equality as an example.
“What’s really changed is the party,” he continued. “And in 2024, I was campaigning for Kamala Harris there as a Democrat. It was very clear we were going to lose. And a lot of the excesses that we’ve had in 2020 came back to revisit … the excess of the party back then summoned the second term of the Trump administration.”
And he hit the nail on the head for what’s driving it: it’s Trump derangement syndrome, which has now spilled into an ethic of burning everything down to defeat the president. Amid the chaos, the loony toon academics, who’ve been anti-American for a long time, have seized on the chaos.
It hasn’t been pretty.