John Fetterman Cracks the Code

By Rich Lowry

Monday, January 15, 2024

 

If we indulge the improbable idea that Democrats will swap out Joe Biden for another candidate when Donald Trump secures the Republican presidential nomination, it raises the question: If not Biden, who?

 

In this scenario, Democrats would be nearly assured victory in November if they switched to someone like John Fetterman.

 

The problems obviously are: 1) Democrats aren’t going to dump Joe Biden; 2) there is no one else in the party like John Fetterman; and 3) the Pennsylvania senator himself at the moment would be even less capable of carrying out the duties of president than Joe Biden.

 

The point, though, is that the new version of John Fetterman has made progress toward cracking the code. He is demonstrating how — through theatrical dissent from a few fashionable left-wing causes and strategic rebranding — it’s possible to create a Democratic politics shorn of some of its dumbest and most unnecessary cultural vulnerabilities.

 

To borrow from John Podhoretz, Fetterman is doing a Bulworth in reverse. Or, to put it differently, rather than courting “strange new respect” — the old phrase for what Republican officials and opinion-makers get when they move left — he is generating strange new disquiet among progressives wondering what happened to their senator.

 

Over the past several months, Fetterman has distanced himself from the excesses of the Left on a couple of key things and done it with a devil-may-care verve that has drawn added attention and underlined his independence.

 

He has had, to use the term from the Clinton years, some Sister Souljah moments. One of the advantages of a Sister Souljah moment is that, when done correctly, it generates benefits out of all proportion to the significance of the underlying issue. (The term derives from Bill Clinton criticizing a pro-riot statement by a not-very-important rapper.)

 

That’s not to say that the Israel–Gaza war or the border, the two substantive issues where Fetterman has dramatically departed from the Left, aren’t important. But how much is Fetterman really giving away ideologically by robustly favoring Israel in a war with a terrorist group or acknowledging the crisis at the border?

 

You can still favor Medicare for All while saying Israel should finish the job against Hamas, and you can still support a $15 minimum wage — or for that matter, a host of standard Democratic positions on immigration — while saying we should get a better handle on the border.

 

Similarly, it doesn’t cost Fetterman anything to say that Bob Menendez is a disgrace who doesn’t belong in the Senate. It’s not as though Fetterman is the Senate majority leader, and a bunch of other Democrats have also called on Menendez to resign (although Fetterman was the first).

 

Fetterman, though, has made his points in pungent, showy ways that gives them more resonance. He says he’s going to return a $5,000 donation from Menendez’s PAC in envelopes of cash. He puts up posters of Israeli kidnap victims on his office walls. He irreverently shuts down an anti-Israel heckler.

 

This creates a sense of, “Wow, Fetterman is a different kind of Democrat.”

 

Fetterman isn’t really departing from Democratic orthodoxy per se. Other Democrats are pro-Israel and anti-Menendez, while the party didn’t used to be as committed to a de facto open border as Biden has been. What he’s doing is declaring his independence from the radicalism of the Left and from the progressive brand. Now, after proudly declaring himself a progressive for years, he says he’s never been one. (He more plausibly says he’s always been pro-Israel.)

 

Fetterman is also triggering the right people. Earning the contempt of angry and childish pro-Hamas protesters is an incalculable benefit to him.

 

It pushes Fetterman’s image to the center without, again, requiring much of him except pissing off activists associated with a radioactive cause.

 

The new Fetterman is making himself a throwback to an earlier version of Bernie Sanders who represented a non-woke socialism. Not too long ago, for instance, Sanders was willing to say that unchecked immigration wouldn’t serve the interests of the United States, and those interests should be foremost.

 

Another benefit of Fetterman’s high-profile acts of heterodoxy is that they put him on the popular side of these issues. According to a recent Quinnipiac poll, 26 percent of voters think more favorably of Fetterman for expressing strong support for Israel, whereas 14 percent say this makes them think less favorably of him. On the border, his rhetoric makes 35 percent think more favorably of him and 9 percent less favorably of him.

 

In sum, Fetterman is pointing to a different path for the Democrats where the party doesn’t have to cater to its left and, in fact, can pivot off of it to appear more reasonable.

 

In the 2020 Democratic primary, Joe Biden talked of how he believed that the old Democratic Party was still there — and won. But as president he’s been led around on a leash by the Left on most things, creating enormous vulnerabilities for himself in a race against Trump, especially on the border.

 

Make no mistake, Fetterman will use whatever additional credibility he earns with his new tack to try to help Biden win Pennsylvania in November. He’s still a progressive in all but self-description. Yet he’s probably going to be more popular and harder to beat, and definitely more interesting. Democrats should pay attention, although they probably won’t — ensuring that Fetterman has lots of running room to brand himself as a different kind of Democrat.