Fetterman now has higher approval ratings among Pennsylvania Republicans than his own Democrats.
The sitting Democratic senator from Pennsylvania spent Thursday morning on a radio program calling his party’s current direction “an orgy of socialism” and labeling some of its nominees “garbage.” That is not a quote from a Republican attack ad. That is John Fetterman, on the record, with his name attached.
Fetterman made the remarks on the “Cats and Cosby” program, hosted by John Catsimatidis and Rita Cosby. “Our party has a socialism problem,” he told the hosts. “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.”
He named names. He called Michigan Democratic Senate nominee Abdul El-Sayed one of “these garbage kinds of people,” noting that El-Sayed campaigned with Hasan Piker, who said America deserved September 11th and praised Mao Zedong after October 7. He pointed to Troy Jackson, the Maine Democratic candidate who replaced Graham Platner, a man Fetterman described as “an accused rapist” who also reportedly sported a Nazi tattoo. Jackson, who replaced Platner, carries an endorsement from the Democratic Socialists of America.
As originally reported, this is not a one-time outburst. Fetterman called El-Sayed and others communists when El-Sayed won the Michigan primary. He dismissed New York mayoral winner Zohran Mamdani as a clown over what he called Netanyahu arrest theater. He declined to campaign against Republican Senate colleague Dave McCormick. He posted publicly that 58 percent of Democrats viewing socialism favorably is “lunacy,” and declared himself a “proud free market capitalist.”
His colleagues have responded to all of this with near-total silence.
That silence is revealing. James Carville has threatened to leave the party over its socialist drift but has not followed through. Hillary Clinton reportedly called the party’s leftward shift a “healthy experiment” at a Hamptons dinner. House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries filmed a defensive video response after inadvertently meeting with Jared Kushner. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer is quietly rerouting Democratic Senate strategy around Michigan because he cannot figure out how to steer voters away from El-Sayed.
None of them are doing what Fetterman is doing. He is saying it out loud, using plain language, and signing his name to it every time.
The political result is stark. Fetterman is now more popular with Pennsylvania Republicans than with Pennsylvania Democrats. For a sitting Democratic senator, that is an extraordinary position to be in, and it raises an obvious question about where his political home actually is at this point.
He has not answered that question directly. But he keeps making the same arguments, and his party keeps not responding to them.