Sen. John Fetterman just became something the crackpot lefties taking over his party will loathe, and no doubt they will attempt to exact their revenge.Fetterman is now more popular in Pennsylvania among Republicans than Democrats. The sitting Democratic senator from Pennsylvania has a higher approval rating with the opposing party than with his own. And spent his Thursday morning on a radio show calling his party’s direction “an orgy of socialism” and describing its nominees as “garbage.”
“Our party has a socialism problem,” Fetterman told “Cats & Cosby” hosts John Catsimatidis and Rita Cosby. “I’ll be the one Democrat that calls it for what it is and not use the euphemism that it’s a big-tent situation.”
The specifics he named are exactly right. Michigan Democratic Senate nominee Abdul El-Sayed — “these garbage kinds of people like El-Sayed in Michigan” — campaigned with Hasan Piker, who said America deserved September 11th and praised Mao Zedong after October 7. Troy Jackson, the Maine replacement for Nazi-tattoo-sporting Graham Platner, is endorsed by the DSA. And Platner himself was, per Fetterman: “An accused rapist.”
He’s been saying versions of this for months. He called them communists when El-Sayed won Michigan. He called Mamdani a clown over the Netanyahu arrest theater. He refused to campaign against Republican colleague Dave McCormick. He posted that 58% of Democrats viewing socialism favorably is “lunacy” and declared himself a “proud free market capitalist.” Every time he does any of this, his Democratic colleagues stare at their shoes and say nothing.
That silence is the entire story.
James Carville threatens to leave the party over socialism — he won’t. Hillary Clinton calls the socialist takeover a “healthy experiment” at a Hamptons dinner. Hakeem Jeffries accidentally lets Jared Kushner trick him into a meeting and then films a defensive response video in a leprechaun hat. Chuck Schumer is quietly rerouting the Senate map to work around Michigan because he can’t figure out how to get Democrats to vote against El-Sayed.
None of them are doing what Fetterman is doing — saying it plainly, publicly, with their name attached.
The situation Fetterman is describing isn’t going to fix itself. The Democratic establishment has consistently chosen accommodation over confrontation at every stage of the socialist takeover — in primaries, in policy, in messaging, and in the refusal to publicly call out candidates whose views are radioactive to the general electorate. Each accommodation makes the next one easier. Each DSA primary win emboldens the next challenge. The establishment keeps warning about the trend and then doing nothing to reverse it.
Fetterman is the canary in the coal mine. The problem is that the coal mine is now on fire and the people running it are debating whether fires are part of a healthy big-tent environment.
“Democrats like El-Sayed are proud to campaign with garbage like Hasan Piker.” He said it. He meant it. His party isn’t listening. In fact, they appear to be doubling down on a political ideology that is 180 degrees the opposite of our founding philosophies of free markets and freedom. And there are sixty-five days to November.