That Man in the Hoodie
John Fetterman infuriates progressives—and good for him
When Pennsylvania Democratic senatorial candidate John Fetterman made it onto my radar screen, I was not impressed. Hoodies, cargo shorts, po-mo progressive ideas, general weirdness—what the hell, I thought, was going on in the Keystone State?
Then, just days before the Democratic senatorial primary election, Fetterman was felled by a stroke. I have some personal acquaintance with what a calamity like that does to a person, and I was disgusted by the way in which his campaign staff and even his wife, Gisele Barreto Fetterman, pretended that his stroke was just a minor whoopsie.
At a time when he should have been in a rehabilitation facility, concentrating on his recovery, John Fetterman was made to serve as a political prop. It was clear from his few public appearances during the campaign, and especially from his performance during the debate with his Republican opponent, Dr. Mehmet Oz, that the stroke had been much, much worse than his so-called friends let on. He won the election, however, and went off to Washington, where the inevitable happened. Just six weeks after being sworn in as Pennsylvania’s junior senator, Fetterman was admitted to a Washington DC hospital, suffering not only from the physical aftereffects of his stroke but from severe depression.
I assumed at the time that Fetterman’s political career was over; it seemed to me likely that he’d lost his chance to make a good recovery. But it turns out I was wrong—and in this case I’m glad I was wrong. Senator Fetterman appears to have beaten the odds, overcoming the severe speech and auditory problems that afflicted him. From what I’ve seen of him on TV, Fetterman seems fit enough to serve in the Senate, and good for him.
There’s something else, however. As mentioned above, John Fetterman came onto my radar screen with the profile of a progressive. I gathered the impression that he was just another dismal leftie in the style of Bernie Sanders, AOC and her Squaddies, etc. Under normal circumstances his 2022 Senate campaign would have confirmed or denied that assumption, but the stroke prevented that. Only now that he’s recovered and resumed his senatorial duties are we learning where he stands politically.
I’ve been pleasantly surprised by what I’ve heard from him so far—not least because Fetterman has mightily offended the progressive wing of the Democratic Party, of which he was thought to be a member. That turns out to have been an unwarranted assumption.
“I’m not a progressive,” Fetterman told NBC News in December. “I just think I’m a Democrat that is very committed to choice and other things. But with Israel, I’m going to be on the right side of that. And immigration is something near and dear to me, and I think we do have to effectively address it as well.”
“The right side” on Israel is firm, even fervent support for the Jewish state in its war with Hamas, accompanied by denunciations of the antisemitism exhibited on the American Left after October 7. And “to effectively address” immigration means policies to reduce the number of migrants and impose limits on asylum claims. These positions, of course, are anathema to progressives.
Fetterman has also been pointedly critical of his Democratic colleagues’ inaction on Senator Bob Menendez, who has been indicted on federal bribery charges: “He needs to go. I don’t understand why he can be here, having expelled [former GOP Representative George] Santos. But I’m sure there might be a very innocent explanation of having gold bars in your mattress and overstuffed envelopes of cash.”
The Senator’s failure to toe the ideological line has infuriated the progressive commentariat. “John Fetterman's shameful betrayal of the left” blared Salon earlier this month, equating him with thought criminals Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema. “John Fetterman's Support Collapses Among Younger Voters,” warned Newsweek on January 11. Well, if a man is to be judged by the enemies he makes, being disapproved of by the antisemitic youth of America is a badge of honor.
The most delightful feature of this leftie meltdown over the Traitor Fetterman is that the comrades can’t do a damned thing about it. The Senator has five years to go before he must face the Pennsylvania electorate again, and who knows what the American political scene will look like by then? Postmodern progressivism may have imploded and Fetterman’s “blue-collar liberalism,” as NBC calls it, could well be back in vogue.
I have no doubt that John Fetterman and I are on opposite sides of many issues. But at least he seems free of the ideological fabulism, the supercilious two-facedness, the congenital dishonesty, the radical irrationalism, of contemporary progressivism. Maybe the dreadful ordeal of his stroke and its aftermath caused him to reevaluate some of his political beliefs. Maybe he was never really a progressive. All I can say with confidence is that the hoodie and the cargo shorts are much less objectionable when the man wearing them stands up against the evil of Hamas and its despicable apologists on the American Left.
Fetterman has also been one of the most articulate proponents of the Japanese takeover of U.S. Steel.