The Last Credible Democrat?

Weird: Man Becomes More Conservative As He Regains Brain Function https://t.co/6nesG1N1WN pic.twitter.com/TcQ2n21Rx7

— The Babylon Bee (@TheBabylonBee) December 6, 2023

A piece by Christopher Nicholas at Real Clear Politics raises an insightful poimt:

Is there any Democrat around today who even comes close to Trump’s dominance in the attention economy? To me, there’s just one: John Fetterman. U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders and U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez are a distant second.

Fetterman is a walking “look at me” sign – given the contrast between his appearance and his diction and his education pedigree.

In the course of nominating Sen Fetterman for Loser of the Week on Mark Halperin's Morning Meeting program yesterday, Sean Spicer noted,

. . . the John Fetterman phenomenon. and so I'll say it less about the person and more of this "oh, he's the second coming" and "he's gonna be our savior", a guy who's running around in a Carhartt and shorts, is somehow the future of the Democratic party, I never thought that that would fly, and I think that we finally popped the bubble.

Dan Turrentine simply agreees,

He's not well.

So the conclusion seems to be, as Voltaire said of God, if John Fetterman did not exist, it would be necessary to invent him, but the problem in this case is that the Fetterman we thought we'd seen has turned out not to exist.

One particularly head-scratching video of Fetterman emerged earlier this year in which he was on a flight to Pittsburgh apparently arguing with a pilot over his seatbelt.

Despite fallout with progressives over his staunch support of Israel in its war in Gaza, Fetterman was still an in-demand personality last year to campaign in the battleground state of Pennsylvania for Biden and, after Biden dropped his reelection bid, Vice President Kamala Harris.

Since Trump won November’s election — and Pennsylvania — things have changed. Many one-time supporters have turned on Fetterman over his softer approach to Trump and his willingness to criticize fellow Democrats for raising alarm bells.

It nevertheless brought Fetterman plaudits.

Bill Maher, host of the political talk show “Real Time with Bill Maher,” suggested that Fetterman should run for president in 2028. Conservatives — who had long made Fetterman a target for his progressive politics — have sprung to Fetterman’s defense.

Up to now, more centrist Democrats have been reassured, if nothing else, by Fetterman's ability to get attention. Nevertheless, it looks as if his current erratic behavior is not without past context. Christopher Nicholas points out in the first link,

[H]e lives poor but has a multi-million trust fund at his disposal.

Who had access to world class health care but ignored his doctors for five years and then lied to his boss, then Gov. Tom Wolf, about it.

Who later suffered a bad stroke and then lied to the state about it and his recovery as he campaigned for higher office while, of course, serving as the state’s lieutenant governor.

A true renaissance Yinzer … who of course, grew up in south-central Pennsylvania’s York.

I had to look up Yinzer, which is not Yiddish, but a Scotch-Irish name for residents of the Pittsburgh area. Nicholas seems to be concluding that Fetterman has always been something of a phony, even before his rise to national prominence, and current developments should maybe not be a surprise, except to people who thought Fetterman was something he never was.

But this brings us back to a point of yesterday's post, that mainstream Democrats have become an alliance between the upper class and the Lumpenproletariat, not the working class, but the criminal underclass. Nicholas in his essaay cites Sen Sanders and AOC as distant seconds in a Democrat contest for attention, but even this is problematic -- Sanders is a putatively doctrinaire red diaper baby who spent his honeymoon in the Soviet Union, yet he clearly has no problem with his party's deviationism in embracing the Lumpenproles. But his time is nearly up in any case.

The future of the party lies with AOC. This looks like the lesson of trhe Fetterman story.