No one will ever mistake Pennsylvania Senator John Fetterman for a conservative. But neither will people ever accuse him of being a “progressive.” In a business where pigeon-holing politicians as either right or left, conservative or liberal, Fetterman is a throwback.
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Fetterman tried for two years to fit in with the progressive cool kids in the Democratic Party. That was fine as long as he didn’t have to stick his head above the parapet and expose his deeply held, pro-Israel beliefs.
But the October 7, 2023, attack by Hamas that slaughtered 1,200 Israeli innocents not only split the Democratic Party but awakened something in Fetterman. For the first time in his political career, large numbers of his fellow Democrats were on the opposite side of an important issue. And he didn’t care one bit.
Fetterman will not be attending the Democratic National Convention this week in Chicago. Perhaps it’s just as well, given the circumstances. He insists that his non-showing at the convention is not due to the hysterical opposition directed at him by fellow Democrats. “It’s not about me,” he says. Fetterman knows that’s not true but it’s his way of playing the political game.
“I’ve been frustrated by some of my members and how they’ve chosen to handle that situation,” Fetterman noted as he commented on the Israel-Gaza conflict. “I don’t agree with a lot of their views, but whatever kinds of political choices or any kind of political costs that I’ve incurred throughout all that, I don’t care.”
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Pro-Hamas protesters have been following him wherever he goes. They showed up at his home, and Fetterman climbed on the roof, waving an Israeli flag.
Senator Fetterman responds to anti-Israel protestors camping outside his house in Braddock by waving the Israeli flag from his roof.
Follow: @AFpost pic.twitter.com/QWnVyF56n1
— AF Post (@AFpost) January 27, 2024
He seems to take particular pleasure in taunting pro-Hamas protesters.
Senator John Fetterman walks past ceasefire advocates getting arrested while he waves the Israeli flag.
In the past month, Fetterman has come under fire from leftists and progressives who supported his candidacy. pic.twitter.com/mRucy0XXgD
— Yashar Ali 🐘 (@yashar) November 10, 2023
Needless to say, the radical left has turned on Fetterman whose “everyman” personae included unwavering support for Israel.
The Beautiful People loved Fetterman: The actress Kerry Washington endorsed him. So did Padma Lakshmi and John Legend. So did Oprah Winfrey—even though Winfrey had helped launch the television career of Fetterman’s Trump-backed Republican opponent, Dr. Mehmet Oz.
These days, not so much. 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.”
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There’s a lot of that going around. Fetterman ran as an unabashed progressive in 2022 but shortly before being elected, suffered a serious stroke. It wasn’t exactly a “Road to Damascus” moment, but the illness and his slow recovery gave Fetterman some freedom that he didn’t have before.
Fetterman is still a man of the left. It’s a “muscular liberalism” that puts radicals like Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez to shame and makes much of his party uncomfortable. He’s a thoughtful man in an era of feeling, not thinking, and he’ll almost certainly be primaried when he runs again in 2028.
