Politics
Democrats Desperately Need Fetterman's Vote, Fetterman Desperately Needs A Minute
By Sean Vanity, . BSN Network. Satire.
Pennsylvania Sen. John Fetterman confirmed Saturday that he is a Democrat, that he remains a Democrat, and that he would like everyone to stop asking whether he is a Democrat.
The closing keynote at the Texas Tribune Festival in Austin was, by most accounts, a forty-five minute exercise in a man explaining that the label still fits while declining to say what the label currently means.
Fetterman has spent the past year voting with Republicans on immigration, breaking with his caucus on foreign aid, and describing the progressive wing of his own party in terms a Republican would have to think twice about. He did all of this, he noted, as a Democrat.
"I am a Democrat," Fetterman told the Austin crowd, which appreciated the specificity.
Asked how he would vote if Democrats reached a 51-seat majority and needed him to break a tie, Fetterman declined to speculate. This is the political equivalent of a surgeon declining to speculate about whether he does surgery. The question was not hypothetical. The math is public. His answer was a shrug in sentence form.
Sen. Chuck Schumer, asked for comment through a spokesperson, replied with a statement that described Fetterman as "an independent voice who caucuses with Democrats," which is the kind of sentence you write when the honest version would get you on CNN for the wrong reasons.
Democratic strategists, meanwhile, have spent months calculating exactly how many Senate seats they need and arriving repeatedly at the same number: 51. Fetterman is the 51. He would like to be respected as a complex figure who defies easy categorization. Both things are true at the same time and only one of them is anyone's problem.
Fetterman's office released a statement after the keynote reaffirming his Democratic identity and his belief in working across the aisle, a phrase that no longer means what it used to mean and probably never did.
"John has always been willing to have hard conversations," the statement read, "and to ask the difficult questions that Washington refuses to ask." The difficult question Washington is currently asking is whether John Fetterman will vote with John Fetterman's party when it counts, and the answer, delivered from a keynote stage in Texas, is: he'll let you know.
The senator is up for reelection in 2028. Pennsylvania is a swing state. The majority is on the line in November. Fetterman is a Democrat.
He would really like credit for that last part.
The story we are making fun of: https://thehill.com/homenews/senate/6113446-fetterman-gop-speculation-51st-democrat-midterms/