Democrats Have the Blueprint for an Apocalyptic Comeback. They Just Don't Know It
Recovered from his brain damage, John Fetterman is challenging his colleagues to cast of theirs.
As we’ve discussed before, each of America’s major political parties is so dysfunctional that the only thing keeping it viable is the fact that the other is in a comparable state. By the same token, the first party to put adults back in charge—or at least, do a good enough job of faking it—is all-but guaranteed a devastating and potentially transformative victory over the other.
Having decisively rejected adult leadership in this year’s primary, there’s no chance of the Republicans having any such epiphany without some sort of devastating loss forcing it. Likewise, Democrats’ failure to replace Joe Biden and the Biden campaign’s focus on leftist pandering instead of moderating on his problem areas (and no, Biden’s recent immigration executive order doesn’t count) show it hasn’t suffered enough to change course either.
One advantage Democrats have over Republicans is that, whereas MAGA will try to extend its dominance of the GOP as long as they possibly can, one way or the other Biden won’t be their nominee next time, and at the very least whoever they wind up nominating won’t belong in a dementia ward. Their senile standard-bearer is a unique circumstantial burden; there’s no cult or cottage industry demanding his successor has to be a Biden super-fan, comparably old and incoherent, or Hunter.
Of course, that’s only the start of shaping up. Given the current woke fever enthralling them, odds are high that whatever non-sundowning nominee Democrats land on in 2028 will still carry the self-imposed handicap of going all-out to satisfy the lunatic leftist base instead of working to rehabilitate the party’s weaknesses on the kitchen-table issues that are currently driving voters back to Donald Trump.
But if they really wanted to admit they have a problem and do something about it, Democrats currently have a secret weapon so secret they’re probably not even aware of it: freshman Senator from Pennsylvania John Fetterman.
As impossible as it seemed back when he was unable to put together a coherent sentence in his campaign against Republican nominee Doctor Oz (yet another sterling Trump primary pick), since his stroke recovery Fetterman has emerged as model for the deadliest combination in American politics: thoroughly leftist, but with just enough sanity and self-awareness to win over non-leftist voters.
On issue after issue, Fetterman’s voting record is consistently liberal, but that’s not what he’s ever in the news for anymore. Rather, he’s become his party’s most prominent voice against woke mania, taking stands and making points that resonate with everyone but the most disgruntled social-justice zealot.
From the Washington Examiner in February:
“I think I’ve met with six family victim groups during all of this,” Fetterman said. “And, you know, that should have stopped because everyone should have been home long ago. And I don’t understand why, to anyone that is protesting or demanding a ceasefire, let’s be honest here, why aren’t you protesting to bring them all home right now? Why aren’t you demanding that Hamas surrenders as well?”
[...]
“I support a two-state solution as well,” Fetterman said at the bipartisan press conference organized by Sen. Joni Ernst (R-IA) and Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-FL). “But that is meaningless until Hamas is effectively eliminated because now Hamas disavows and rejects a two-state solution. They are committed to the destruction of Israel. I would never want to negotiate with a group that’s committed to my death as well.”
From the Philadelphia Inquirer last month:
Fetterman was honored with the Presidential Medallion for his unwavering support of Israel at the ceremony on Wednesday. The medallion, a high honor from the New York City-based Orthodox Jewish University, was last year awarded to Daniel Gold, the inventor of Israel’s Iron Dome air defense system.
“I don’t belong in that company, I truly don’t, I really don’t,” Fetterman said of Gold during a speech at the commencement. “I’m just a senator with a big mouth that happens to be committed to standing with Israel.”
Fetterman, who graduated with his master’s in public policy from the Harvard Kennedy School in 1999, wore his Harvard graduation hood on stage at the beginning of his speech. But he said he has been “profoundly disappointed” in “Harvard’s inability to stand up for the Jewish community after Oct. 7,” and said it’s not right for him to wear the hood on Wednesday. He removed it, and the crowd stood up and cheered.
From Independent Journal Review, June 6:
“I’m not a progressive, I just identified myself as a regular Democrat,” Fetterman said to CNN’s Dana Bash, Fox News reported. “Now, eight years ago, I was a progressive, but the situation’s changed and I‘ve been very clear that I didn‘t leave that label. That label leaved [left] me and I think it’s much more important to be focusing on Donald Trump instead of those kinds of purity tests and those kinds of issues.”
[...]
Fetterman also responded to Rep. Pramila Jayapal, D-Wash., who told CNN on Tuesday that President Biden was using the “same tools as Donald Trump” in the border control crisis.
“She’s entitled to her own opinion, but it does also seem like some of the harshest words for the president in this situation seems to be more coming from very safe, and blue, very kinds of places. Now in Pennsylvania, border security is an important issue and we do all believe that we should have a secure border, and I never thought it was unreasonable for any Democrat to want to make our border more secure,” he said.
From RealClearPolitics, June 8:
[BILL] MAHER: How do you explain that, if you can? That the people who consider themselves the most liberal have abandoned Israel, which was always a liberal darling for the people who- the terrorist organization who outwardly say they want a genocide, who outwardly are on the one side who is against the two-state solution. Somehow, they wound up with them. Why do you think that is, and will this split the Democratic party?
FETTERMAN: Well, it does, because there's an appeal there. I think you talked about that like last week. You really hit with the gender apartheid. You've talked about a lot of these issues. And some of the most progressive and left parts of the Democratic party are standing for the kind of side that have kinds of organizations like Hamas or these kinds of nations that there are no rights for women and they certainly don't embrace the LGBTQ kinds of lifestyle.
And even in Philadelphia, the Queers for Palestine blocked the Pride Parade in Philadelphia, and I never saw that on the Bingo card.
Recognizing concern about open borders? Sharing decent Americans’ revulsion at liberal institutions’ indulgence of terrorist sympathizers? That is most definitely not the Democrat Party of today...but it models a theoretical Democrat Party that could win back the slice of blue-collar America that’s lukewarm on the culture wars but wants a government that seems to take their economic welfare seriously while not seeming completely insane. A Democrat Party that doesn’t repel them quite enough to overlook Trump’s mountain of personal sleaze and could mop the floor with the next crop of sycophantic lightweights he fills downballot races with.
In short, a Democrat Party that takes to heart the insidious wisdom of Rep. Peter Kostmayer’s immortal words at the 1988 Democrat National Convention:
We're not going to blow it this time. Just shut up, gays, women, environmentalists. Just shut up. You'll get everything you want after the election. But just, for the meantime, shut up so we can win.
And again, all of the above is despite a voting record not drastically different from the Squad’s. None of what Fetterman is doing requires an overhaul of the left-wing policy agenda. It just requires listening more to the voters they’ve lost than the far tinier share of freaks who have nowhere else to go—and the simple calculation that some short-term restraint on immigration or spending could win them a big enough congressional majority to enact all the dream legislation they want to rig elections, the courts, and the immigration system in their favor for the rest of our lifetimes.
This doesn’t necessarily mean nominating Fetterman himself for president (although if Dems’ 2028 bench matches the caliber of the last couple post-Obama cycles, and if he manages to kick his self-admitted penchant to “dress like a slob,” who knows?). It just means that Democrats have in him the blueprint for a messaging approach that could take back America. MAGA better pray they never figure it out.