The GOP's Cruel War on John Fetterman
Like most Americans, I discovered John Fetterman during the height of the pandemic, when he rose to national fame as a Lieutenant Governor of Pennsylvania for sticking it to Trump and his bullshit allegations about electoral fraud in his state.
I immediately liked Fetterman because he is what Donald Trump pretends to be. He’s effortlessly authentic, a straight shooter who says what’s on his mind in a way that resonates with the American people.
I also appreciate that, unlike pretty much every politician since the beginning of time, John Fetterman looks like me. It’s about time giant, lumbering, bearded bald dudes with bad posture who wear hoodies and shorts were represented on the national political stage!
Fetterman is the Gritty of American politics. I mean that as the high praise. Like Gritty, Fetterman’s popularity transcends Philadelphia and Pennsylvania. Fetterman is a working class icon with a powerful connection with the American people.
When Fetterman ran for Senate against Dr. Oz it was a political version of Caddyshack, with Dr. Oz as Ted Knight and Fetterman as Rodney Dangerfield. If you watch Caddyshack and are rooting for Ted Knight then you an enemy of mankind.
Being extremely human, Fetterman had a stroke and while I understand how people might have concerns about his suitability for office after a medical crisis like that the Republican response was unspeakably cruel.
The outsized troll wing of the Republican Party took deeply personal, vicious shots at Fetterman and his family, cruelly mocking his looks, his children and wife, his wardrobe and, more than anything, his state of mind.
Last week Donald Trump Jr. referred to Fetterman as “the brain-dead potential senator from Pennsylvania” before sneering, “I believe that if you’re going to be in the United States Senate, you should have basic cognitive function…like, to have a working brain.… But that’s what we’re up against. We’re up against a Democrat Party today that doesn’t believe that a United States senator should not have mush for brains. ‘Mush for brains should be 100% fine,’ that should be the Democrat slogan for 2024.”
It didn’t work. The stroke might have slowed Fetterman down but it did not stop him. At the polls Fetterman prevailed. Good defeated evil. A man of the people defeated an effete caricature of an out of touch snob.
Dangerfield won.
This has only emboldened Conservatives to attack Fetterman in increasingly vicious ways that betray their contempt for working people and the proletariat.
It’s not unlike how Conservatives have tried to weaponize the fact that AOC, a HUGELY popular figure among young people, just like Fetterman, worked as a bartender while in college, something they inexplicably seem to see as a source of intense shame and humiliation not a job that’s actually kind of cool.
The Republican Party’s take on Fetterman seems to boil down to, “Working people love this guy, identify with him and see themselves in him. What a fucking loser!”
The Republican Party wants to make AOC and Fetterman the faces of the Democratic Party because they don’t understand their popularity or appeal or the fact that AOC and Fetterman are both WAY better at playing the game then they are, which is why they’re in office helping save our country in a time of profound crisis while their critics are hating from the sidelines.
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