OP-ED: Pennsylvania’s hard to figure U.S. senator
John Fetterman is not easy to understand. The tall, grungy-looking senior senator from Pennsylvania is, politically-speaking, literally unfathomable.
This past week he again broke ranks with his fellow Democrats on another consequential matter. By voting against a War Powers resolution offered by Senate Democrats to end the administration’s war on Iran, Fetterman once more cast his lot with President Trump.
And since everyone knows what Democrats think of Trump, the act itself has all the appearances of slow political suicide.
Now, it may be true that Fetterman has his reasons for voting to sustain the administration. Last month, writing in the Washington Post, he served notice that Iran, the world’s “leading state sponsor of terror, should be held to account.
“I appreciate this administration acted on the threat Iran and its proxies pose” – the proxies in the case being Hezbollah in Lebanon and the Houthis in Yemen.
Fetterman sees himself in heroic terms. In the same Washington Post commentary published May 7, he wrote, “Although I was elected as a Democrat, I’m proud to serve all Pennsylvanians…. It has become increasingly lonely to serve in that way, but I firmly believe it’s needed.”
Well, yes, but then the former Braddock mayor and lieutenant governor of Pennsylvania compounds things for Democrats by the company he keeps: he pretty regularly shows up on Fox News, and not just to give the Democrats’ version of things.
Last week on Sean Hannity’s prime time anti-Democratic rant show, Fetterman joined the right-wing chorus castigating the ultra progressives nominated on Tuesday in New York City for U.S. House seats.
Did he really have to refer to the nominees collectively as “the dirt ball left?”
Name-calling members of your own party is not a good look.
“You know some of these candidates are outrageous,” Fetterman told Hannity. “You have candidates, they’re ‘abolish ICE,’ ‘abolish the police,’ ‘abolish the border.'”
New Jersey Democratic Sen. Cory Booker, asked about Fetterman’s trashing of the party’s left flank, commented, ‘If you want to heal a country, you can’t be picking fights…. The focus has be the November elections.”
One of those nominated on Tuesday by NYC Democrats, Dan Lander, told CNN, “Primaries are a time to have those [political] fights out. And then, as we head to the fall, it’s a time of unity. I will try to be a force of unity.”
Lander advised Fetterman to “stop attacking other Democrats and decide to rejoin the fold.”
A pol without a party is a pol without a pathway to power. After being the darling of Pennsylvania Democrats in 2022, John Fetterman has effectively written himself out of the Democratic Party.
Or so it would seem.
John Fetterman, who will not face voters again until 2028, considers himself a Democrat in good standing. He’s stated that he would make a terrible Republican. He points out that he voted against Trump’s Big Beautiful Bill, the one that figuratively funds ICE from now until the last immigrant is shipped off, oh, to Senegal.
Backing up his claim that “you’ll always know exactly where I stand,” the senator notes that he casts his lot with Chuck Schumer and Senate Democrats “nearly 100%” of the time.
He’s offered proof of his party credentials in other ways as well. He’s pro-gay rights, pro-labor, and supports access to abortion. He’s excoriated GOP meddling with Social Security, and has been a fierce defender of federal food assistance for the poor. He opposed last winter’s federal occupation of Minneapolis.
Raising campaign cash for vulnerable Democrats running for the Senate in 2026, he’s told donors that taking “back the Senate for Democrats” is essential.
John Fetterman is a different political animal altogether.
Richard Robbins lives in Uniontown. He can be reached at dick.l.
robbins@gmail.com