[ "Im not a progressive. Im just a regular Democrat." Fetterman is
in the first year of a six-year term. He has time to repair relations
with progressives or sever ties altogether. At this point, the latter
is rapidly happening anyway.]
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JOHN FETTERMAN EXITS THE PROGRESSIVE COALITION  
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Ross Barkan
December 19, 2023
Political Currents
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_ "I'm not a progressive. I'm just a regular Democrat." Fetterman is
in the first year of a six-year term. He has time to repair relations
with progressives or sever ties altogether. At this point, the latter
is rapidly happening anyway. _

PA Democratic Senator John Fetterman on December 6 defended
'reasonable' border talks. This follows his staunch support for
Israel's war in Gaza, which has also befuddled some of his typical
allies on the left., (Photo credit: Politico)

 

Labels in the American political system have always been slippery.
[[link removed]] Progressive,
liberal, leftist, conservative, hard-right, and hard-left can mean
very different things to very different audiences. MAGA, perhaps,
offers the most clarity—an unabashed supporter of Donald Trump. But
even then, within the vast array of Republicans who back Trump, are
disparate political views. Some want a national abortion ban. Some,
like Trump himself, don’t quite know what they want.

Others strive to shed labels altogether. Many politicians, for
somewhat obvious reasons, embrace them when they’re
convenient—rounding up votes in primaries, appealing to activists,
and raising cash—and abandoning them once they become a burden. The
burden, or perceived burden, arrives when a politician has to campaign
in a competitive general election. John Fetterman
[[link removed]], the
famous senator from Pennsylvania, is deep into his rebrand, and
seemingly considering how to position himself when he faces voters
again in 2028. His campaign proudly promoted a clip
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the 2022 Democratic primary when he told a journalist who asked if
he’s a progressive that “no, I’m just a Democrat that has always
run on what I believe and know to be true.” Interestingly enough,
Fetterman’s social media account doesn’t quote this verbatim.
Instead, the post above the clip reads “I’m not a progressive,
I’m just a regular Democrat.”

It’s a notable approach from a politician who has caught heat, of
late, for his hawkish views on Israel.
[[link removed]] Fetterman,
unlike several other Democratic senators, has not called for a
ceasefire or denounced the Israeli military
[[link removed]] for slaughtering
thousands of civilians in Gaza. As pressure has grown on the Biden
administration to do more to curb Benjamin Netanyahu’s military
ambitions, Fetterman’s rhetoric has been mostly indistinguishable
from Mike Johnson or any other conservative Republican. His
simultaneous embrace of tougher immigration laws has led NBC News to
label him a “maverick”
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breaking with progressive Democrats.

Calling Fetterman a maverick is understandable, if inaccurate. A
maverick politician—few hardly exist anymore, and John McCain barely
qualified—will break with their _party_ on major policy questions.
Imagine a Republican who loudly supports abortion rights or a Democrat
who denounced the first or second impeachment of Trump. Strengthening
the border doesn’t count; Democrats themselves have a range of views
on immigration and Biden himself has pushed for more border fencing of
late. Fetterman, unlike Trump, has not said immigrants are poisoning
the blood of America. That would be one way, in a far darker manner,
to become a maverick. And defending Israel at all costs certainly
doesn’t qualify. The Democratic Party, these days, might be less
hawkish on Israel than the GOP, but staunch Zionists occupy all the
leadership posts. There is no daylight between Fetterman and Hakeem
Jeffries, the House minority leader, or Chuck Schumer, the Senate
majority leader, when it comes to Israel.

But Fetterman is punching left. There’s nothing new to
this—see Sister Souljah
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might even be earnest. His staff has certainly argued his views on
Israel are decades-old, solidified in graduate school. What is more
obvious, and helpfully collated on X, is that Fetterman used
to happily
[[link removed]] identify
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a progressive
[[link removed]]. He
called himself one in 2016, 2018, and 2020. He inched away from the
label in 2022, when he became the frontrunner in the Democratic
primary for Senate, but never disavowed the movement of left-leaning
activists and organizations that backed him earlier in his career.
Fetterman ran unsuccessfully for the Senate in 2016 as a Bernie
Sanders supporter and remained close
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Sanders when he was elected lieutenant governor in 2018. He benefited
from Sanders’ enormous network of online donors in all of his
statewide campaigns. He took the Vermont senator’s endorsement
multiple times and championed key planks of his platform: a $15
federal minimum wage, Medicare for All, and new wealth taxes. He never
identified as a socialist or embraced the more confrontational flavor
of leftist politics favored by the Squad, but he was, undeniably, a
member of his party’s progressive wing.

It would have been plausible for Fetterman to back a higher minimum
wage _without_ calling himself a progressive. “I just want people
to make more money and have cheap healthcare” would have been
enough. “It’s common-sense,” he might have said, to “make the
wealthy pay their fair share. There’s nothing progressive or liberal
about that. It’s how we should run a country.” But that would have
been less exciting to the donors and activists who were going to power
Fetterman’s early campaigns. Fetterman wanted to raise cash and he
wanted to win. Hence, the Sanders associations were useful. When Dr.
Oz, in the 2022 general election, tried to scare moderate Democrats
away, the pivot began. He hasn’t looked back.

If Fetterman were being honest, he could simply declare he is no
longer a progressive. He could say he used to be one in 2016 and 2018
and 2020 but he feels differently now. He doesn’t like how
progressives talk about Israel or the border or some other hot button
issue that might matter to a cross-pressured Pennsylvanian and he’s
decided he’s going to operate separately from them. He could say he
used to believe in Bernie Sanders and now he’s less sure. But doing
that would permanently alienate the activist infrastructure that
lifted him to prominence in the first place. Fetterman probably
believes this is the safer route: to state, against all available
evidence, he was _never_ a progressive. This is dishonest and, in
the long run, may not even be good politics. It’s not like Trump,
when he was first running for president, ever sought to hide that he
used to be a Democrat or pal around with the Clintons. If anything, he
used his unscrupulousness to his advantage, boasting about how easy it
was for him, as a well-heeled donor, to buy Democrats off.
[[link removed]] Fetterman
needn’t be so venal, but he could acknowledge the past and point the
way forward.

Politically, all of this can only matter so much. Fetterman is in the
first year of a six-year term. He has time to repair relations with
progressives or sever ties altogether. At this point, the latter is
rapidly happening anyway. For the Pennsylvania activist class,
Fetterman is increasingly persona non grata. Since he also needs to
appeal to centrists and Israel-supporting Jews in the Philadelphia and
Pittsburgh metropolitan areas, he might not care at all. If he does go
down this path, though, he’ll have to find a new way to raise cash
and wrangle volunteers. There are many young people who showed up to
canvass for Fetterman 2022 that will not bother for Fetterman 2028.
They’ll have long memories—and other heroes by then.

_[ROSS BARKAN is a contributing writer to the New York Times Magazine.
His reporting and essays have appeared in New York Magazine, the
Nation, and elsewhere. He is the author of three books, including the
novel The Night Burns Bright.] [[link removed]]_

_Political Currents [[link removed]] by Ross Barkan is
a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my
work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber._
 

* John Fetterman
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* progressive Democrats
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* Pennsylvania
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* Working Families Party
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* Bernie Sanders
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* Progressives
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* Pittsburgh
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* Philadelphia
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* Jewish community
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* Jewish voters
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* anti-Semitism
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* zionism
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* Israel
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* Palestine
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* Israel-Gaza War
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* Immigrants
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* border
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* Democratic Party
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